Hi all, I need some serious advice. I urgently need to transfer video from my digital cam corder to my PC to burn onto DVD. My camcorder is a SONY DCR-HC30 handy cam. I have tried on both of my pc's to tranfer with USB 2.0. But the video quality is sub par at best. It looks awesome if I run into my TV but looks like a webcam if I tranfer it to my pc. I recently bought ADStech DVD Xpress and monster rca and s-video cables, Installed every encoder and decoder I could find, it helped a bit but still looks fuzzy. My Pc specs are: PC 1: P4 2.0, 512 pc 2100,Maxtor 160 gig eide, Geforce 5200 256, windows xp home SP2 pc 2 AMD 4000+ Sandiego, 2 gigs corsair XMS pc 3200,Seagate barracuda 120 gig SATA2, 7800GTX 256, windows xp home SP2 I need to record my home routine for rehabilitating my son as he recovers from a serious brain injury and need the video to be as clear as possible for Doctors to view. I realize that DVD Xpress was a cheap way to go and I may have to spent a lot more money to acheive the results I need but I'll spend what I have to . Any help is appreciated.
Your Camcorder is a MiniDV Camcorder so you Do not connect it Via a USB Port (If you want the Actual DV Video Transfered to your PC).... DV Camcorders Must be Connected to your PC Via the Firewire Port if you want the Actual Material you shot to be Transfered to your PC.... When you Try to Transfer Via the USB Port the Video Gets Compressed (usually to Mpeg-1 Format at a Very Low resolution) which is why the Quality Sucks.... What you need to do is Connect your Camcorder to your PC useing the Firewire Port on the Camcorder to the One on your PC (If you don"t have a Firewire Port on your PC you will have to install a Firewire Card).... You will then just need a DV Capture Program Like "WinDV" or "DVIO" to transfer the Video that is Stored on the DV Tape to your PC in DV AVI format (It will suck up about 4gb per 20 min of Video)..... After you have the DV AVI files Transfered to your PC you can do with them what you wish like Edit or Make a DVD ect... The Quality will Be MUCH Higher than it was Via USB and you won"t need to use your ADS DVD Express.... When Captureing through the Firewire Port there is absolutly No Loss of Quality from what it Recorded to the DV Tape cuz it is actually a Lossless Data Transfer from the Info on the DV Tape to your Hard Drive ,Think of the DV Tape as a Hard Drive that stores Video Data and when you Connect the Camcorder to your PC Via Firewire it is Just Like Copying the Data From One Hard Drive (The DV Tape) to another Hard Drive (Your PC), But when useing the USB Port the Video Gets resized and Compressed so it isn"t a Lossless Data Transfer but more of a Bad Copy...... Cheers PS: Those Programs For Transfering the DV From your DV Camcorder (WinDV and DVIO) are Both Freeware and you should be able to download them on this web site....
Not sure if my MoBo will take Firewire but I will check it out.I can't get a firewire cable tonight but will do so first thing in the morning.I hope it's this simple,If this works I'll be in your debt, since I'm too simple to figure it out on my own. Thanx a ton for answering my question. I'll post another reply to let you know how it came out.
