Panasonic NV DS25 camcorder to PC

[foton]

I have Panasonic NV DS25 camcorder and as many others have already asked for is to connect it to the computer.

I have a windows xp, P-3, 256MB RAM 700Mhz desktop computer and it doesn't have a firewire port. From the manual of the camcorder, the only thing that it tells is that the camcorder can be connected to the computer using an interface box (now is this the firewire card??), which is not included with the camcorder.

Assuming that I managed to get the hardware to connect corder to computer, what is the software I can use to record the video into a cd later on? Any freeware s/w with limited functions is also fine with me as long as I can burn the video onto a cd. Again I don't have a dvd drive at the moment.

Finally, I'll be glad if anybody can post a picture of camcorder connecting it to the computer. I wanted to see how a firewire port/card looks like so that it would be (visually) clear for me to understand.

Thanks a tonne.

[foton]

Sorry guys,

I got some answers from previous posts about firewire. Anyway, if someone wants to add anything, I appreciate that.

Thanks,

[greymalkin]

I'll add this...be careful! I've heard alot of people posting in on different forums about thow they fried their firewire port on the camera by trying to hot-swap it...to be safe I'd make sure and get a good quality firewire cable and also try to keep from unplugging it/plugging it back in while everything is on...

[State Of Mind]

1. A FireWire card with a Texas Instruments chipset would be best.
2. Just put it in one of the PCI slots.
3. Let Windows XP install the built-in FireWire drivers so it recognises the new device.
4. Plug the FireWire cable into the FireWire PCI card slot and connect the other end into the DV-port on your camcorder. Make sure to have it in Playback Mode.
5. Use WinDV to capture DV to HD.
6. You'll have to encode the DV to MPEG-2 or AVI before it's small enough to fit on a CDR (700 MBs).
7. Use Nero to burn or use CDBurnerXP Pro.

[foton]

Many thanks for the replies.......I'll do the same and see what happens.