Recording to Laptop

[Cntcomplain]

Hi,
I don't know if this is the right forum for the question, but I know I can get yall to answer this question in a couple of clicks and will take me hours trying to find it myself.

I would like to know how to hook an 8mm camcorder to my laptop and record it to my HD for later burning. I would also like to know what kind of software I need to compress the files in a quality good enough for DVD.

I have only an s-video output on my laptop with 512mb ram, 1.4Gh and Win XP SP2.

I know that I would have to have an adaptor to plug into my laptop that would have audio/video cables that could plug into the camcorder.

I would like to know what kind of hardware and software that I need to buy or try in order to get started.

Again, if this isn't the correct forum, then I appologize.

Thanks for any suggestions!

Chris

 

[jrbarnett]

Many camcorders have a firewire port, as do many laptops. This would allow a digital signal transfer. All you would need was video capture/editing software that allows reading from and writing to firewire devices plus a suitable cable to link the two.

If this isn't the case with your laptop then I'd get some sort of USB capable capture hardware that can take the analogue connectors from your camcorder.

If you are planning to do any video manipulation on the laptop, then you will soon find that 512Mb RAM is the bare minimum, and if the laptop can take more, then it is worth upgrading, especially if you are going to be doing it regularly. A 1.4GHz chip will be ok for basic low res editing, but again, a faster chip will help with the rendering.
You will need a lot of disk space for handling video as well - raw footage in AVI format is huge.

John

 

[ArizonaGeek]

Unless the camera is a digital 8 it wont have a firewire port. Assuming it is a regular 8mm or High 8, you will need an analog to digital converter. Hit up your local computer store, fave online computer store or Ebay, look for a USB Dazzle device (there are others but I have used Dazzle before) for recording to your laptop. They will come with some basic editing tools and burning software. There are hundreds of software packages out there to convert video to AVI or DVD.

Imtoo recording software is one that I recently started using ... havent used it enough to form a decent opinion but there are LOTS out there. It's just how much you are willing to spend.

Good luck!

Cheers
Rob

 

[mel999]

Hi Chris - This is just a guess but pinnacle might do the job for you. PC World have both the software and the necessary hardware.

Mel in the UK

 

[Cntcomplain]

Hi,
Thanks for the advice. I went to Radio Shack and purchased an S-Video Signal Converter. I haven't tried it yet, but appartently I plug the s-vid cable into my laptop and the other end into the adaptor and then the adaptor plugs in to the yellow thingymajig on the camcorder. Then I have an audio cable that plugs into the audio port on the camcorder and then into the sound input(I guess where the mic goes) on the laptop.

I just bought this external DVD burner. I had no idea that it was such an experience trying to burn different projects. I have movies downloaded to my HD that I'd like to put on DVD also.

Is there a site or a tutorial that you may be aware of that can walk a novice like myself through the various processes of converting the different files and such to DVD?

I may have bought the wrong thing for the camcorder. I did it in a rush, but it wasn't expensive. It may do the trick, but it's not going to do anything without software, so I will check out the sites you mentioned above.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[ArizonaGeek]

Dazzle is owned by Pinnacle software so you are going to a slimmed down version of the software. The set up you bought may or may not work but good luck.

Your better off doing a Google search for converting specific video files to DVD. More than likely what you are going to want to do is convert them VCD instead of a DVD. Most video you download is of a lower quality and converting them to DVD will only distort them and you'd end up wasting a DVD. At least with a VCD you can convert them to a CD which are far cheaper these days.

I really think you will need a converter to record your video or at least some sort of software that will convert you analog video to digital.

Good luck!

Cheers
Rob