mini dv capturing on laptop without firewire?

[the1st]

hi to all,

i have a new laptop without firewire on it, so i am interested if i am able to capture video
from my old mini dv samsung camcorder to laptop via usb 2.0, instead of firewire? is there any kind of firewire-usb
switcher i could use?

btw when i connect the camcorder to laptop it does not recognizes it at all, i guess because
i can't find new Vista drivers for the camcorder which is 3 years old.

thank you.

[JohnnyMalaria]

You can buy inexpensive FireWire cards that slot into a PCMCIA slot that nearly all laptops have. I have ones by Adaptec and Pyro.

The USB route will either be poor (often MPEG1) and/or have little support from most DV-based software.

See the "FireWire 400 PCMCIA CardBus Cards" list here:

http://www.firewire-1394.com/cards-f...ok-cardbus.htm

[the1st]

ok, i'll try to find it. didn't know it can go through the card slot.

tnx john