Putting movies from camcorder to laptop?

Question

I want to put recordings from my JVC model GR-D850U camcorder to my laptop. They sell plug in for my USB port to the camera but will that only play them on the computer or will I be able to save them? First camcorder and not sure If I should take it back or not.

Answer 1

The JVC GR-D850 is a MiniDV tape based camcorder.

ALL miniDV tape based camcorders transfer video using their DV port connected to your computer's firewire port using a Firewire cable. Firewire, i.Link and IEEE1394a are all the same thing. USB will not work.

If you do not have a firewire 400 port on your computer, they are typically easy to add - and they are cheap.

Read the camcorder manual's section regarding transferring video to a computer. The USB cable is generally only for transferring stills - though some camcorders allow webstreaming.

MiniDV tape provides the best available video quality because DV is compressed the least (as compared to hard drive or flash based camcorders - and DVD based camcorders are the worst - they compress video the most - and should be removed from the market).