Disclaimer: I'll admit I'm no techie, but I generally know enough to be dangerous.

I have a Sony DCR-TRV17 camcorder and I want to get the video tape to my computer. Is this easy to do? I can't find my manual currently and that's why I'm asking the question.

I would like to get the video to my computer and then burn some DVD's. Is this possible?? I have a new Dell 8250 desktop.

Thanks

 

is the sony a mini dv camera? does it have a firewire output?

does your dell have a firewire input?

this site will help you with what u want to do...

http://www.dvdrhelp.com/capture

 

I have a Sony DCR-PC101 and I use Firewire ports and Adobe Premiere 6.5.

 

The most important thing to discern is whether your Camcorder is Mini-DV, DV8, or RCA. Both the DV's will mean that your camera should come with a firewire cord. Next, you need an IEEE1394 (Firewire) port on your computer somewhere.

If you need detailed instructions, I can help you out there as I do video capture quite a lot for both my company and my parent company (SparkReality SE and 2B Produtions, respectively)

 

I have a Canon mini DV camcorder...all it takes is a firewire cable and an up to date Windows OS. I've never seen a video tape camcorder that had a firewire outlet. You may need one of those silly aerodynamically designed plastic things that sit on your desk and acts as a go-between for your camera and computer. I think there is a model called the Dazzle???

 

Dazzle is the right name... it's used with the Pinnacle Studio series of programs, but it's for an RCA camera to connect to

 

OK - all I needed was the firewire cable. I am all set.

Do MPEGs play on a DVD player? Just wondering so I can compress these DV movies. One tape sucked up 10.5Gig!!!

 

DVD's are coded in the MPEG4 format, although a special version of it.

 

You will need to encode the DV avi file to a DVD complient mpeg file. There are lots of ways to do this. One of the easiest would be to use Pinnacle Studio 8 which can capture, edit and write to DVD.

 

DVD's are encoded in MPEG-2 format. You must have specialized software to build the ISO image prior to burning. Depending upon bitrate you will consume up to 3.9gbs(A full burnable ISO-compliant DVD image) for just under 60minutes of footage. MPEG-4 is not playable on any DVD players at this time, nor have I heard of any future support at this time. Windows Media 9.0 is supported by some of the newer players if you need an alternative. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/ Windows Movie Maker is a free download if you'd like to give it a shot. Pinnacle/DVD-ISO is the recommended way to go if you'd like to share disks with your friends.

Pinnacle Studio8 will cook the whole chicken for about $100. I recommend using it to save brain cells if you don't have a few years of DV editing experience.