Bought a camcorder

[neorussell]

I bought this camera the other day and I want to do a couple of things with it but don't know how. Some please help me out, I'm a complete newb at this.

here's the camera i bought:
http://www.jvc.ca/en/consumer/archived-product-detail.asp?model=GR-D70U

I want to do the following with it if possible:

-Let's say I'm playing PS2, I want to record what I'm playing straight from the TV. I don't want to record from outside where noise can be recorded.

-The box gave me a AV cable to connect to the TV, I think it's to play what's in the Mini-DV, what if I want to record what's on TV. What do I need? Would the same wire allow me to do this. I'm hearing about output and input thing from someone that's why.

-I can put the tape directly for computer use but the program they provided sucks ass. What's the best program to use for converting what's recorded in .avi or even .mpg file?

-It uses SD memory, can I use that for recording and how many minutes do I get for a 1gb stick?

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I might have more question later, hopefully somebody please respond, I want to use the camcorders full potential that's why.

[pchan]

1. To record what PS2 is displaying, just get a composite(RCA) cable spliter for video and audio... one to TV and another to your camcorder. Or you can plug directly to your camcorder but not much fun playing game through the puny camcorder LCD and speaker.

2. You need an encoder to convert avi to mpg e.g. TMPGEnc, CCE, Mainconcept etc. Then you need DVD authoring software to cut your DVD e.g. TDA, DVDLab etc.

3. You cannot record video onto the SD card. SD card is only for digital still picture.

[neorussell]

1. To record what PS2 is displaying, just get a composite(RCA) cable spliter for video and audio... one to TV and another to your camcorder. Or you can plug directly to your camcorder but not much fun playing game through the puny camcorder LCD and speaker.

I looked this up and it's showing me Male or Female of that sort. Which one do I pick? Remember the PS2 has it's own AV cables that I can connect through the VCR or TV to show the game in the screen. I want to record what's showing in the screen.

[EGrier]

Hi neorussell,
I have this same camcorder. You could try to get female RCA connectors to connect the yellow(video), white(lt audio), and red(rt auido) cables from your PS2 and camcorder together. The JVC supports analog input so, I think this might work. Hook up the A/V cable that came with your camera to the camera. Set up the camcorder to accept the signal that is coming from your PS2 by switching the JVC to play mode, push the jog dial that is on top of the camera to access the menu. Set the S/AV input to 'ON' and try it out. If you can see the game on the LCD then press the record button on your camera twice to begin recording and once again to pause.

Good luck!

[thecoalman]

-I can put the tape directly for computer use but the program they provided sucks ass. What's the best program to use for converting what's recorded in .avi or even .mpg file?
.

The file on your cam is DV-AVI. Tranfer it as DV-AVI via firwire (don't use USB). Any capture program will produce identical results because your not actually capturing anything but transferring the footage. Simialr to copying a file with the exception that your comp has to write the data to HDD fast enough. From there you can convert to mpeg or whatever else you want to do with it.

Just add to what EGrier posted, you can probably skip the record part and go directly to HDD. I not familiar with your particualr cam but most cams that accept composite input will do that.

[takeshi]

-The box gave me a AV cable to connect to the TV, I think it's to play what's in the Mini-DV, what if I want to record what's on TV. What do I need? Would the same wire allow me to do this. I'm hearing about output and input thing from someone that's why.

First of all, you need to check your manual to see if the output connectors are also input connectors.

[pchan]

1. To record what PS2 is displaying, just get a composite(RCA) cable spliter for video and audio... one to TV and another to your camcorder. Or you can plug directly to your camcorder but not much fun playing game through the puny camcorder LCD and speaker.

I looked this up and it's showing me Male or Female of that sort. Which one do I pick? Remember the PS2 has it's own AV cables that I can connect through the VCR or TV to show the game in the screen. I want to record what's showing in the screen.

Edit:
You need to check the cable that come with your camcorder. Mine a Sharp model came with male composite. If you JVC is the same, you need to get 1 female split to 2 female and male-male converter. You need three sets, 1 video (yellow) and 2 for audio (red and white).

[ZAPPER]

Souds like a trip to Radio shack!

Cable spliters and adapters might give just a little bit of dirt to the setup but I would doubt that you would notice.

I would guess that you should be able to go from your game set to a splitter for each cable. And then from the slpitter one set to the TV and the other to the cam. And then if you didn't want to actually tape it, using the pass thru feature you should be able to use a firewire to your PC.

I have no actual hands on with your exact cam but you should be able to get it to work. Most of the time from my expeirence the AV port on the cam is bi-directional. Reading the specs in your link make this look questionable, but I would say that it probally is.

If you are not too embarrased, take the whole cam and the cables that you have to a store and try to get the connecters and cables that you need by setting it up with their equipment. As long as you have a cable that fits the cams analog AV port you shouldnt be looking at more than 20 or 30 bucks in adapters and maybe an extension.