I am very new to computing, but would like to put the videos of children as babies onto my computer so I can put them onto dvd disc so I can keep them forever. I have a 2 year old computer with I think a pentium 4. I run XP. My video camera is a Sony Handycam vision CCD-TRV59E PAL. I have normal 8mm tapes and some HI 8 tapes. Is there anyone out there who can take me through the fools guide step by step? I would really appreciate any help you can give. Thanks Ruth
I'm not familiar with that camcorder model but I'm assuming it has the FireWire (or Sony calls it i.Link) plug? If so, you'll have to get a Firewire adaptor for your computer (if it doesn't already have it) and the appropriate software. A lot of adaptors come pre-packaged with some software which isn't too bad. Once you have the software, the "help" menus will teach you how to capture, edit, etc.
Thank you for replying. Please can you tell me what a firewire adaptor is? I have usb ports on the front of my computer is it anything to do with them?
Firewire is different from a USB port. Your computer will probably not have one. An add-in card should cost you less than $20. (My prices are US dollars, I gather you're not in the US if you're using PAL, but most of this will be the same regardless.) However, if your camcorder is not digital, (MiniDV or Digital8) it probably doesn't have a firewire port. You have two options: Find some way to borrow a Digital8 camcorder, which will play your tapes as well and will be able to send the video out the firewire port to your computer. This would be your cheapest and easiest solution. Otherwise you will need some sort of analog video capture device. There a many options from the ATI All-In-Wonder PCI cards ($100 and up - you don't need to buy the top of the line as the video capture is the same, it's just the 3D gaming chip that increases the cost on the higher models) to Pinnacle, Ads, Dazzle types of USB capture boxes ($100 and up). My choice was a Canopus ADVC100 external box, which connects to the firewire port. It's a more pricey ($260) option, but much better quality than the USB options. From the research I've done it sounds like you either buy a firewire connection solution or you buy a USB connection solution, get fed up with how crappy it is and then go buy a firewire solution. It may even be worth your while to just buy a cheap Digital8 camcorder and the firewire card. In the long run this will give you a very good way to play and capture your old 8mm tapes and a nice new digital camcorder as well. I think you should be able to get a camera starting as low as $300. For the record, I use Pinnacle Studio 8 a lot. It's not the best editor, but it's fairly cheap, simple to use and does all the basic editing and disc creation tasks you'll need to convert your home videos.
THANKS. My camera is a high 8 one and has a port for the firewire,(so I have been told). One thing I am confused about is that I was told I would have to increase the memory on my computer to deal with the movie transfer, but I am not sure if they were just trying to blind me with science to get me to spend more money in the shop. Any advice? Cheers Ruth
Video editing is a very intesive process. I've done all my editing on machines with 768 - 1024MB of RAM. I haven't tried with much less, but RAM is not too expensive and I'd recommend you load your system up if you have any performance issues. As a side, I am a computer tech/administrator in my company, and adding RAM is the #1 thing you can do to improve your computer. Watch for a sale and max out your system. Besides that, make sure your hard drive is fast enough to stream video (any ATA100 or ATA133 with an 8MB buffer will do, as well as an external USB2 "hi-speed" or firewire enclosure). Also keep your hard drive defragmented to keep it operating at top speed.
