Camcorder to laptop

Monkeymagic

Hi all

Hoping someone can help, have tried finding the answer myself but have been blinded by too much info. I have an old Samsung camcorder (model VP-D70) which takes small digital cassettes. Before I get rid of it and join the modern world, I need to get the videos on to a disc. The instructions tell me I need an IEEE1394 4 pin to 6 pin lead. Can see those on ebay but cant see where on earth this would go on my laptop (HP G7000). Does this mean i need some sort of card or cardbus? if so, can anyone tell me what sort and is ebay best place to buy this sort of thing? and if I do need a card, where does that go on the laptop - sorry, really not technical, can you tell

Many thanks

neilwoods

IEEE1394 4 pin to 6 is fire wire.

If your laptop will accept a cardbus then yes. They slot into the side of a laptop..

If not, do you have a cable to view the camcorder onto the TV (jack one end with red, white, yellow phono). If you do then you could use a usb to dvd converter. Just showing this one to give you an idea, plenty more out there, cheaper and more expensive.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/ClimaxDigital-VCAP303-Converter-Maker-easy-recording/dp/B001DERJZ6/ref=sr_1_12?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1334697590&sr=1-12

Mr_Toad

Monkeymagic wrote: »

Hi all

Hoping someone can help, have tried finding the answer myself but have been blinded by too much info. I have an old Samsung camcorder (model VP-D70) which takes small digital cassettes. Before I get rid of it and join the modern world, I need to get the videos on to a disc. The instructions tell me I need an IEEE1394 4 pin to 6 pin lead. Can see those on ebay but cant see where on earth this would go on my laptop (HP G7000). Does this mean i need some sort of card or cardbus? if so, can anyone tell me what sort and is ebay best place to buy this sort of thing? and if I do need a card, where does that go on the laptop - sorry, really not technical, can you tell

Many thanks

You mention cardbus, does this mean you have a cardbus slot on your laptop?

If so then you need a cardbus Firewire card, search eBay and you'll see them ranging in price from £5:99 upwards.

An alternative is to find a friend or relative that has a Firewire port on the PC or if you know anyone with a Mac as they have them.

TakeThis

No PCMCIA slot on that laptop. Do you or a close friend or relative have a PC?
If so, you can fit a suitable card to their PC. Examples here, here and here

Takes only a few minutes to fit.

Anything else is liable to have relatively poor results.

paddyrg

Connecting via firewire gives the best quality captures, with the largest filesizes. USB captures will be lower quality, but then the camera may not have been that brilliant to start with.

Monkeymagic

Thanks for replies. I dont know what a cardbus slot is to tell you if I have one . I do have the lead that is first mentioned which allows me to view on the tv though later reply states this wont give me good result? unfortunately dont know anyone (well enough) to hijack their pc to do this.
does that mean neilwoods suggestion is my only choice?

thanks again

TakeThis

Monkeymagic wrote: »

Thanks for replies. I dont know what a cardbus slot is to tell you if I have one . I do have the lead that is first mentioned which allows me to view on the tv though later reply states this wont give me good result? unfortunately dont know anyone (well enough) to hijack their pc to do this.
does that mean neilwoods suggestion is my only choice?

thanks again

For DIY, perhaps yes. But don't expect too much. Read the reviews.

Mr_Toad

Monkeymagic wrote: »

Thanks for replies. I dont know what a cardbus slot is to tell you if I have one . I do have the lead that is first mentioned which allows me to view on the tv though later reply states this wont give me good result? unfortunately dont know anyone (well enough) to hijack their pc to do this.
does that mean neilwoods suggestion is my only choice?

thanks again

You are going to have to be careful.

When you connect your camcorder to a PC it streams a lot of data at a hell of a pace.

This can cause problems.

If your PC can't process the data quick enough for any reason it will drop frames. There is no facility to slow the data down. If the method you use to connect the two can't handle the speed of data you will again lose frames and this means you'll lose picture quality.

That's why your camcorder has Firewire as early USB wasn't fast enough to cope with speed of transfer of the data from the camera.

I had problems with one of my old PCs, I thought it was USB 2, it turned out that only the USB ports on the back of the tower were, the port I was using on the front was only USB 1 and I got dropped frames.

Using the USB 2 ports on the back was better but not perfect. In the end I bought a Firewire card and that got rid of the problem.

Older CPUs could also max out trying to process the data, again causing dropped frames but that no longer applies to modern computers as CPUs are a lot faster.