From DV to PC

[Hamyapicam]

Hi Everyone.

I am truly a newbie. I just bought a sony Dİgital Camera today and it came out with a USB connector. Now I keep reading these post about capturing it with firewire. Sİnce I have USB only do I need a software to record the movies from my camera to pc(without using a lot of space everyone talks about:)

How can aI manage this? DO I need a software or DO I have to buty one of those mppeg cards?( I gyuse they cost a lot) so which software should I use.

I kow a little about divX. Can IO use divX maybe?

I ll appreciate any help on this subject. thanks...

[resnullius]

1 yes it takes ALOT of space, nothing you can do about that unless you get a capture card ad capture from you cam straight to a compressed format. You'll lose alot of quality that way (ie. it was pointless buying a dv cam)
You should get a firewire(same as IEEE1394, or dv card) card it is the best way of using a dv cam. it's not expensive (got mine for 15$).
Forget divx. it's ok if you will never touch it after(never make a vcd, svcd or dvd with divx), it's not great for editing either...

[Thorn]

USB is completely separate from firewire (1394) so if you don't have a firewire/1394 camcorder, you can't connect to a firewire card. You can't capture any reasonable quality video wth usb (unless maybe it's usb 2.0, but that's pretty new). Firewire is much faster than usb so it can handle the high bandwidth video requires.

If you only have usb, you would have to capture from analog (using the cables to connect to your tv). You could then capture in mpeg, mjpeg, huffyuv, divx, or whatever you wanted, depending on the space you have available. There are many guides around here for that

[Hamyapicam]

thanks for all the help..

I just found out that I DO in fact have a firewire output on my camera. İf I get the firewire card I guess it will not compress the avi file. But if I get the capture card which is expansive it will compress the file which is what I want. So which is the right choice. What is the right way to do this without paying too much money on a card after the camera? Should I get the firewire or capture card?

Thanks for the support...

[Tommy]

thanks for all the help..

I just found out that I DO in fact have a firewire output on my camera. İf I get the firewire card I guess it will not compress the avi file. But if I get the capture card which is expansive it will compress the file which is what I want. So which is the right choice. What is the right way to do this without paying too much money on a card after the camera? Should I get the firewire or capture card?

Thanks for the support...

The right choice is whatever you decide to do. You have two conflicting statments, so either you can pick up a firewire card and work with a bigger file or pay more money and pick up a capture card. I'd say pick up the firewire card, why anyone would want to convert digital video to analog just to convert it back to digital.....

Actually the dv (avi) will be compressed just not as compressed.

[EricB]

You have something crazy going on with your typing / spelling. I don't know what a "sony Dİgital Camera " is!

If you want to use your camera as a capture device, make sure it has analog in. If it doesn't, you will only be able to convert stuff that you record through the lens.

[Thorn]

Check pricewatch.com (or use vcdhelp's link to pricegrabber and support vcdhelp!) and look for a 1394 card... I've seen them as low as $13 before shipping. If you're really short on hd space (I think a full hour of dv is 13GB, but you can always capture in segments) you can get 20GB for around $50-$60 (maybe less) so for what you get you're probably ahead... UNLESS you want to capture from other sources like vhs or whatnot, then you could probably get a decent capture card for about $50. You make the call.

Keep in mind that capturing dv takes a bit of space but you can compress it to anything you want later.