Video dvd uploading question?

Question

I have kind of an old video camera (well its probably about 4 or 5 years old), but it has a firewire port and so does my computer. I can get the camera to connect to the computer, it says "new hardware found", but I don't know how to actually get the video off the camera and on to the computer. I've tried Windows Movie Maker a million times, it always says the camera isn't connected. The camera didn't come with a program to use for uploading to the computer, so I've pretty much given up hope on that idea (though, if you guys have any ideas I would really appreciate them). Anyway, my friend said they took a video camera tape to Walmart and had it made into a dvd, so does anyone know if you can upload the video from the dvd to the computer? I'm kind of lost when it comes to cameras and videos.

Answer 1

You can't transfer the video from a MiniDV camcorder using USB. It will transfer only by using Firewire (IEEE1394a, i.Link - all the same thing).

So yuor first step is to add a Firewire400 port to your computer. Then, get a Firewire cable. Both items are cheap - and installing the port is easy to do.

Once this is done, MovieMaker is used to "capture" the video from the camcorder - when the camcorder is in Play/Edit mode.

Not recommended, but: If you go the DVD route your friend did, this assumes your computer has a DVD optical drive. Put the DVD in the optical drive and rip the DVD using something like HandBrake:

http://handbrake.fr/

Then you can bring that ripped video into MovieMaker. Be advised that the video quality will NOT be as good as importing the digital video in directly from your camcorder.

Answer 2

Mini DVD's need to be finalized before you can use them in a computer, some programs will then let you import the dvd into your program, but most of the time you need to convert your video (I used hand brake and downloaded it free). I use studio 11to put my videos together. Firewire connections are for mini dv camcorders not mini dvd cameras.