Capturing from Camera to PC

[bla4free]

Hi. Is it possible to "record" straight from the camera to a computer? We want to start our own news show at school and we basically want to record our skit, edit it on a computer (MS Windows), then save it to a DVD, or Divx, etc. Would a video camera with a firewire port work or do I next extra hardware? Our budget is about $5,000 for all the equipment and software. What do I need to be able to do this? Thanks for your help!

[edDV]

Hi. Is it possible to "record" straight from the camera to a computer? We want to start our own news show at school and we basically want to record our skit, edit it on a computer (MS Windows), then save it to a DVD, or Divx, etc. Would a video camera with a firewire port work or do I next extra hardware? Our budget is about $5,000 for all the equipment and software. What do I need to be able to do this? Thanks for your help!

Sure. No problem.

What camcorder? If DV, it outputs live on the IEEE-1394 (iLink, Firewire) port and all you need to do is cap it with WinDV (Windows) or iMovie (Mac). Linux too.

[bla4free]

WinDV seems promising, but are there any other applications that can capture the video then allow us to edit it? I've been browsing software like Pinnacle Studio, Ulead VideoStudio, Adobe Premier. We just need something kinda simple to save movies to. Will Windows MovieMaker do this?

[dadrab]

Spend the majority of your money on a good camera and dedicated desktop computer with two or three hard drives and plenty of space. Don't muck it up with games or any other mess - just audio and video applications. You may want to save a little for some encoding and authoring software, but most of the best stuff is free.

Get on this site and read until you've had enough...digest what you've learned...get back on the site and read more. Continue in this manner until you have a good overview of what it takes to go from DV tape to DVD. Then read some more...