Saturday, December 23, 2006

New Camera

Evidently, every PawPaw needs a video camera, to take those holiday videos that no one ever watches. So, for my birthday, I got a JVC GR-D370 video camera. It uses tape, of all things.

I have to get a firewire cable to download video to the computer, and that search will wait till I get to town. I have a 4-pin to 6-pin cable, but evidently what I need is a 4-pin to 4-pin to connect to the computer, as my computer doesn't have a 4-pin slot. The manual tells me that I can download still pictures from the camera to the computer using a standard USB cable, but for video I need a DV cable. Whatever that is.

This camera uses the little digital video cassettes, and I'm sure that there is some utility to those, but to properly edit and manage my video, I'll need some way of getting the video out of the camera and into the computer.

One day next week I'll put both the camera and the laptop in the truck and go searching for a cable. Radio Shack ought to be able to hook me up.

Everyone else has figured out how to do this, what with the monumental success of YouTube. There has got to be an easy way to get video out of the computer and on to my hard drive. Or am I missing something?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

we went through the same learning curve for my son this past summer.
Firewire connectors are not cheap. We found a software package that included the video editing software, the proper cable and a firewire PCI card for less than some stores wanted for the cable alone.
Here in San Diego it was at Fry's Electronics. Don't know if you have them down there in LA. I think the software was Adobe Premier Elements.