Panasonic DV-GS17 to laptop

[Old8mmArchiver]

Hi all,

I have footage on my Mini DV tapes (as well as old 8mm and hi8 tapes) that would like to transfer to my computer.

The computer has windows 10 and only USB ports. (HP Pavilion, with intel core i5)

I have USB cables galore. I have a DV cable.

The laptop has no DV or firewire port on it.

How can I transfer the footage from the Panasonic to the Laptop ?

Would a DV to hdmi cable work ?

I cannot install a firewire card on a laptop and funds are limited.

Thanks in advance

[dellsam34]

There are two different processes for transferring digital DV and capturing analog video such as Hi8. And there is no such DV to HDMI device.
- DV doesn't need to be captured, It is just a file transfer, You would need a DV player such as a DV camcorder and a DV device, Will get to this later.
- Hi8 needs to be captured frame by frame and converted to digital in either a lossy format such as DV/MPEG2/MPEG4 or lossless AVI RGB/YUV 4:2:2

Since you don't have a computer with iLink/Firwire port, Pinnacle made few capture devices that can do all of the above, These devices use to be cheap, But when people discovered the firewire feature on them they are not easy to find now, But you can still get one if you keep an eye.

1-When you connect the device with a firewire cable to the camcorder and playback a DV tape, it will transfer the DV stream to the computer via USB cable and control the camcorder functions from within a DV application such as WinDV. You can also capture analog Hi8/8mm tapes using Digital8 camcorder with this setup in DV format.
2- When connected using S-Video/Composite/Stereo it will capture analog video/audio and transfer it to the computer via the USB cable in a lossy or losseless formats using applications such as VertualDub.

Look for any Pinnacle capture device that has both the DV and USB ports, Models like 500-USB, 510-USB, 700-USB, 710-USB.

The smallest device and USB powered is the 500-USB, Very hard to find.

A driver is needed for newer operating systems, You can just install a trial-ware pinnacle software without having to use it and you get the driver for free.

[dellsam34]

Here is a diagram of different possibilities of the Pinnacle devices based on the video source:

[Old8mmArchiver]

Thanks DellSam for the info. I've had a quick look around but there aren't many out there it seems.

I've Googled for all the items you've listed but not available sadly.

I'll keep the info you given me and hope to come across one in a shop sometime.

I might ask my son if his very old computer desktop can have a firewire card added and maybe get an old monitor from work.

We've got a copy of XP somewhere, if not a VM might do the trick.

[dellsam34]

Links expired !!

[Old8mmArchiver]

I live in the UK ...

I'll keep looking over here

Thanks

[dellsam34]

I doubt you will find these stuff locally, International online auction is your best hope, Or just use a desktop with a firewire card.

[babygdav]

Wow!
It does exist! Firewire to usb!
Never heard of it before, but nice to know someone invented one.
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/pinnacle-710-usb-drivers-for-win-10-64-bit.2760151/

That said... Might be cheaper, easier, faster to get a working, older <$50 mac mini than to find a pinnacle + get all the software drivers and such to get it to work....(assuming you still rather would not want to open your pc).

[dellsam34]

There is no such Windows 10 drivers, the latest driver was for Win 7, These devices work under "Microsoft DV Camera and VCR" name. I did install the Win 7 driver on my Win 10 machine, not sure if the driver took effect or ScenalyzerLive has the capability to detect DV devices under Win 10 or Win10 still supporting DV camera's under USB protocols, Someone with better driver skills can explain it further.

http://cdn.pinnaclesys.com/SupportFiles/Hardware_Installer/readmeHW10.htm

[babygdav]

I live in the UK ...

I'll keep looking over here

Thanks

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Pinnacle-Studio-Movie-Box-510-USB/193428610349?hash=item2d093...0AAOSwbq5emuZv

510-usb in UK