Video Camera to Computer?? Help

[kadbow]

Ok, I am not totally computer illiterate but I try   .  I have an older video camera, I can get the video to a dvd but I would like to get some snippets of the video from the dvd to my computer to send in emails or post on the net.  Is there a tutorial out there on how to do this.  Thanks for any help.
Mark

[Chris Shelton]

what type of camera is it?

[kadbow]

It is a panasonic digital video camcorder that records to mini-dv tapes.

[Chris Shelton]

O I see, you need a capture device for mini DV tapes and DVD's.  I have never used them before because I have a flash camcorder, I just plug the camera into the computer and it puts the files on the drive.  You need the capture device to plug into your camera, then the device plugs into the computer via UBS cable.  And then it should appear as a file wherever you decide to put it.

[kadbow]

thanks

[Chris Shelton]

No problem, hope you get things sorted out!  If you dont feel like research I think you should be albe to go to a best buy or store like that and take your camera and they could definatly help ya out.  I dont know if you are in a remote area or not.  But anyway, good luck!!!

[Tom Mussatto]

Mark, if you still have the original tapes of the video I would suggest you use these rather than try and pull video off a DVD. There is a lot of compression involved in encoding a DVD (MPEG2) and pulling video off the DVD will result in quite a bit of loss in quality.

If you are running XP, Vista, or Win 7 on a PC you should have Windows Movie Maker bundled in the operating system. You will not need any other hard ware or software to capture video from your cam other than a firewire or USB cable.

If you have a firewire port use it rather than a USB port. USB can be slow and unreliable for moving video. You will need a firewire cable, 4 pin to 6 pin.

Open Windows Movie Maker and you will see an option "capture from video device". Be sure to connect your cable to both your cam and PC BEFORE turning your PC on as there is the possibility of frying the firewire port on your cam if you connect it to a hot PC. With your cam connected to PC with firewire cable put your cam in VTR mode, turn on, and click "capture from video device" in Movie Maker. Once your video is loaded into Movie Maker you can do some basic editing with the program and then will be given several export options depending on what you want to do with the video.

If you're running a Mac I believe iMovie is bundled in that operating system and will do basically the same thing.

[kadbow]

Thanks Tom, I do have windows movie maker and was trying to use that to pull video off a dvd.  Looks like I need to go from camera/tape to computer directly.

[Tom Mussatto]

Originally posted by kadbow:
Looks like I need to go from camera/tape to computer directly.

Yes, you'll have better results for a lot of reasons. You can pull video off a DVD but is more involved and results will not be as good.