How can I capture DV without a firewire port?

[alleyman]

I have a HP DV7 laptop that does not have a firewire or PC Card Slot. Does anyone have any suggestion for how I can capture from my mini dv camecorder? It does have USB and ESATA. All ideas would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Chris

[redwudz]

What's the model and brand of your camcorder? Most times, a USB connection is just for lower quality web video. I'm guessing you don't have a PCMCIA slot. If not, you may be able to find a FireWire to USB adapter, but I've no idea how well those might work. Others here might.

Newer laptops seem to have done away with FireWire connections. Be aware that DV is about 13GB per hour of video, so it's not that well suited to laptops unless you have a lot of free space. I figure about three times the GB of the original DV for editing, processing and converting.

But welcome to our forums.

[aedipuss]

other than a couple special panasonic models that included software to capture over usb, without a firewire port your only choice is to send the tape out to a video service if you want to get full resolution video.

[redwudz]

If you could pick up a used desktop PC for cheap, that might be one way to go. PCI FireWire cards are cheap enough and DV doesn't take that much computer power to do basic edits. The camcorder I use now is AVCHD, and though it has HD over USB, my laptop would still struggle a lot to edit it. Really, a desktop PC is the best choice for working with camcorder video.

[alleyman]

Thanks for all the info.