How do I download videos off a tape based video (HD) camera?

Question

I know it needs a Firewire cable and port to download, and that's not a problem. What kind of software do I use? Where could I find that software?

It's a brand new, Canon HDV 1080i.

Answer 1

First thing first you have to determine which type of camera it is.

Is it one of the old VHS cameras?  If so you need an analog cable setup.

If it is one of the digital camcorders that uses the little DV tapes or even copies straight to DVD.  Then you need the firewire cable.  

You'll also need the computer you're using to have a firewire port.  The USB cable doesn't quite transfer the data correctly, because it cannot transfer both audio and video at the same time and maintain quality.

The firewire cable is capable of transferring both without loss of quality.

If your camera didn't come with a firewire cable you can purchase one at Radio Shack or Best Buy.

I use Sony Vegas Studio software on my PC.  If you have a Mac then you can use the iMovie program.  If you use the Windows Movie Maker program that is preinstalled on a PC you will only be able to save your projects to CD not DVD.  I haven't used it before but supposedly you can also use Adobe Photoshop Elements software to create movie projects.    

Once you have plugged your camera into the computer then you can use any of those programs to caputre video from your camcorder.  I'm not looking in one of those programs now so I can't tell you what tab to look under.   However, I believe it is either under the File tab or import media.   What you want to do is look for "Capture Video" under one of those tabs.

After you capture the video then you will be able to edit your film using those programs.

You can find any of those programs at Target, Best Buy, or if you have a Sam's Club card you can sometimes find them cheaper there.  Sony Vegas runs around $89.99 at Target or Best Buy, but at Sam's Club you can get it for around $74.99.  iMove comes with Mac computers.  Adobe Photoshop Elements runs around $109.99.  You could also try looking on www.amazon.com and see if they have any of the programs cheaper.

Answer 2

The camera came with either a USB or Firewire cable and software to support it.  Use that.

Answer 3

You can grab video from that camera under Windows using a free utility called HDVsplit... get it here: http://strony.aster.pl/paviko/hdvsplit.h...

Connect your camera and put it in "play"... that's usually enough for a Canon (I have an HV10). Run this program and you should see the camera show up as a device... sometimes it takes 10-20 seconds to show up. Then select a directory for output, and give the files a name.

You will get m2t files (MPEG-2 transport stream), one for each separate segment of video. By default, HDVsplit will include the time code for each in the file name. These files can be loaded by HDV editing programs, but you'll need a reasonably fast computer to edit them without much delay.