I have a Panasonic NV-GS17EB-S camcorder (few years old). Am using usb cable to connect to computer (no firewire input on computer). Operating system Windows XP with SP3. Windows Movie Maker allows me to copy from playing mini dv tapes on camcorder to wmv files but the resulting wmv files have the audio and audio out of sync - audio is some seconds ahead of the video (although the quality in other respects is fine). Any ideas as to how this can be remedied. Thanks in advance
DV tape was made to be captured via firewire, not USB. Get a firewire card for your computer. Your out of sync problems are, more than likely, caused by dropped frames due to your capturing via USB.
Thanks for your interest, Grandpa - here's what happened. Being an oldster living on a pension, I'm always on the look-out for ways to avoid spending money, and I realized that I could do what I wanted without getting a firewire card (I know firewire cards aren't expensive, but I would have had to pay someone to fit it for me, because I'm not too confident once the computer is opened up). What I did was to hook up the camcorder to the rca av adaptor that came with the ATI AllinWonder video card in the computer; played the tape and recorded it via the ATI card which created an mpg file. I then converted the mpg file to DVD files via Free DVD Creator (which seems quite a good tool for converting, although I couldn't get it to burn the files to DVD). Used Imgburn to burn to DVD. Quality is pretty good, although the process was long-winded (rather like this post!). But now my wife has a nice DVD of niece and nephew to enjoy, so everybody is happy.
As long as everyone is happy with the outcome, that, after all, is what really counts. High fives to you!