Is there any way i can get videos off my non-digital camcorder onto my computer?

Question

Anythingg? Anyonee?

i have a DVD burner/recorder on my dvd player thing but i dont know how to use it, so if you suggest that, please include how to work it :)

Would a firewire work on that even though it's not digital?

helllpppp?

Answer 1

No firewire won't work with analog or mini dvd.

If you have an analog (VHS) camcorder…

You need an analog converter, either internal card or external such as the dazzle. It's very easy to use and come with good software. You would hook your analog VHS camera to the analog converter, the dazzle and then hook the dazzle to your PC. The dazzle cost around 70.00 , but worth the money if you have a lot of VHS to tapes to convert.

Answer 2

Since you provided no details on the camcorder, we can only assume it is analog and it has AV-out connections.

Before you get to far down the path, download the manuals for both your camcorder and the DVD recorder and look through them. The instructions are generally in there.

If you want to try the straight-to-DVD route, you need to connect the AV cables that came with the camcorder to the DVD recorder. It would also be helpful to know whaich DVD recorder you have. Press play on the camcorder; press record on the DVD recorder. The resulting disc will have highly compressed video that can be played in a DVD player - but do not expect the video to be very good if you want to edit it on your computer. You will need a DVD ripper like http://handbrake.fr/ in order to get the video from the DVD onto your computer for editing (the poor quality video).

If you want to convert the video to digital and get it into your computer, the best bet would be to use an analog/digital bridge. But you did not tell use what computer you have, so we don't know if you have only USB ports or if you have firewire ports, too... In any case, if your computer only has USB:

http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us...

If your computer has firewire:

http://canopus.com/products/videoconvers...

Using the camcorder's AV cables, connect the camcorder to the A/D bridge, then connect the A/D bridge to your computer. Press play on the camcorder; Import or capture the video into the computer using whatever video editor you use...