Basic (dumb?) video questions

[EFI69Cam]

My wife just got a Canon HV30 HD video camera. The software it came with only deals with still images. Does anyone know what hardware/software I need to transfer the videos to my PC so I can edit and or burn it to DVD?

I have IEEE 1394 ports on my laptop.

Any help advice etc will be apprieciated.

TIA.

[Tom 72RS/SS]

You can use Windows Movie Maker for editing and transfers, which is probably installed on your machine already and has pretty decent software that's easy to use.

[BA.]

totally agree here.

Windows Movie Maker is a pretty decent program and I use it a lot because of that.
Hopefully your camera has the proper cable to attach from it to the laptop. Once that is done, Windows Movie Maker will automatically recognize it.

In 'WMM', you simply tell it via a link on the left to "import video", you set up a file name and it asks how much video compression/file size you want and whammo, it starts playing the video and recording to your hard-drive.

Once that is done, you can also choose to open the video with 'WMM' and edit it, cutting out pieces and giving fancy scene changes, etc.

If WMM is not on your PC, it is a free download at www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/moviemaker2.mspx

[EFI69Cam]

I cannot get WMM to recognize the camera. It is attached with the proper DV (1394) cable.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[BA.]

Can you go into the System Properties and see if the laptop is showing any errors under the 1394 area?

More than one way to get there but I go to Control Panel, System, Hardware tab, Device Manager and you should have something for IEEE 1394 Bus Host Controller. Just making sure there's no yellow triangle or red exclamation or anything bad like that.


OH, I just re-read your original post. An HD video camera.....hmmm. WMM doesn't seem to get updated often at all, and I don't believe it does HD editing of any kind. :( I'd bet that is why it is not working for you.

There are of course pay programs out there like Pinnacle, Adobe, and Roxio/Videowave. I'm not who is doing HD support.

Good luck man!