Mini DV Camcorder

[lakey]

hi,

i have an old mini dv camcoder with a firwwire connection, no hdmi. i bought a new laptop (dell inspiron 17r) without firewire. after ALOT of reading i bought and tried several adapters to get the dv tape onto my laptop for editing and burning, all failed. i tried some cables and an ion video forever. i cannot get my mini dv tapes off to edit and burn.

my questions are:-

1) is there some kind of adapter/cable that will do the job? i found a product called pinnacle video box, but this is £115. does this work??
2) i may have to bite the bullet and buy a new hdd camcorder, which i dont really want to do as i only use it a couple of times a year. are there any good ones for around the £200 mark? i have read that even hi def hdd camcorders are not as good quality as mini dv camcorders, is this true?

appreciate any help at all!!!

thanks.

lakey.

[2Bdecided]

The cheapest option is an old but good enough desktop PC. Firewire cards are about £15. Good enough desktops for that job are virtually free.

Good HD HDD camcorders (or flash memory based ones) will beat any consumer miniDV camcorder by an absolutely huge margin. I'm not sure you'd call any of the ones around £200 good, but they might be better than what you have. Cheap cameras (old and new) are far worse indoors in low or artificial light than outside in the sunshine.

You might be able to pay someone to transfer your tapes. It's not a difficult job for anyone with the right equipment.

Cheers,
David.

[julitomg]

1) is there some kind of adapter/cable that will do the job? i found a product called pinnacle video box, but this is £115. does this work??

The Pinnacle moviebox does work, I know it from experience, a while back for whatever reason I was left without a firewire card in my desktop and had to urgently edit a video so I borrowed a Moviebox from my brother and was able to transfer the miniDV tapes to the PC (using Adobe Premiere which I use for editing), I must mention it was an older win XP desktop so I couldn´t guarantee that it´ll work well with newer OS. Still it´s about the only firewire to USB device that actually works with video that I know of. Simple adapter cables just won´t help you.

[lakey]

many thanks for the replies, they help a lot!!! looks like the best option is to buy a new camcorder.

cheers!!!!!!

lakey.