Hey I want to make a video but only have an camcorder that uses a tape not digital storage?

Question

Please tell me how to edit it and get it on to my computer thanks!

Answer 1

It depends on the kind of tape that camcorder can use.

MiniDV and Digital 8 tape based camcorders have a DV port that connects to your computer's firewire port with a firewire cable. This is digital storage. The "DV" in miniDV = Digital Video. These camcorders provide the best available video quality because they compress the video the least (when compared to other consumer camcorder storage methods like hard drive, flash memory or DVD camcorders). IEEE1394a, i.Link and Firewire are all the same thing. If your computer does not have a firewire400 port, add one. The cards are cheap and it is easy to do. USB will not work.

Hi8, Super8, VHS, VHS-C and others are analog and do not have a digital video direct transfer method. You need to connect the camcorder to the AV cable that came in the box... to an analog/digital bridge (like the Pinnacle Dazzle or one of the converters from Canopus - then the A/D bridge connects to your computer.

Once you get the video into the computer, you can edit...