Does the firewire work to transfer vids

frustrated76 · Aug 11, 2006, 08:49 PM

Hi,
I have a question..Ha ha of course..I have a JVC digital camcorder. I have a firewire cord and hook up. Can i use that to transfer the video without it being hooked up to my pc or can that only be used to transer pics? I have an HP w/ windows XP. I can't get the video i took a few days ago to uplaod on to my pc so i can edit and burn it. Do i need a dv cable and dv spot on my Pc? I'm getting the feeling that i can't uplaod the video that i took while it wasn't hooked up to my pc(wireless video) a few days ago. I was using windows movie maker and it didn't work andf i was using the nero software that came w/ my dvd writer and that didn't work either.It won't save it in a format to burn it unless its hooked up to my pc..Help..I called jvc but they just weren't getting what i was saying...Thanks

Tipstaff · Aug 11, 2006, 10:16 PM

Yes, you do need to hook it up directly to the PC. That being your camera via the DV cable to the PC. BTW, "DV" means Digital Video. This is normally reffered to as a firewire cable. However, some cameras allow for a USB hookup also, so it depends on the camera and cable you have. Most likely you will need a firewire hookup, and you can purchase a add-in PCI firewire card for very little money.

What will happen is that when you run the editing program on your computer it will talk directly with the camera, syncronize themselves together, and allow to capture from the camera, or edited directly on the camera before capturing to the PC. Also, anything you do on the camera, such as putting in a time code, a space, deleted a scene, anything, will be accessible via the PC, but only if you use the DV or firewire cable. One feature of firewire is time encoding. Whatever you capture from the camera will have the exact time coding that is listed on the camera itself. Say you want to edited your video at 2min30seconds. No problem. Just run the editing program, go to that time, and edit away.

Just one note: be aware that it is best to capture the video from the camera first, then edit it so that the video on the camera itself doesn't get messed up. But again, you could edit the video directly on the camera if you so choose. It's all up to you.