UBB.Developers Forums General Discussion Chit Chat How to get video from a camcorder to a pc?

Hay,
Dunno if its appropriate to post this question here but yall are the smartest computer folks I know and I could use some advice. We have horses and folks are always asking for video of them before coming to try them out. I would like to put some mpegs of the horses on my site but am having a hard time figuring out how to start. I'm using a pc with Windows 98 and the most important thing I need is "user friendly". From what I have found so far I need a camcorder with digital video and some firewire to get the video to the pc. From there I am lost. I'm guessing that I need some kind of editing software but dont have a clue what to get. Could someone suggest a camera/software combo for less than $1000 that will not require me to learn a bunch of non-horse related stuff?

Thanks

It doesn't have to be a digital video cam. You can use a less expensive camera and a video capture card to import the video into your PC. The DV is a lot faster and since it copies the video as a file instead of frames you won't get dropped frames that can happen with a capture device.

There are "lite" versions of video editing software that come with most cameras and capture cards. One thing to consider is if you are importing DV to your PC you have to "render" all that video and it can take a really long time so you will want all the PC power you can muster. If you decide to go the capture card route you will need an extremely fast harddrive subsystem so that you can reduce the chances of dropped frames.

Thanks. I have read up a little bit on the rendering time but most of it skips right over the basics for a beginner. I'm using an old Micron with a PIII at 800mhz and 128 RAM. My ultimate goal is to have about four seperate one minute or less mpegs of each horse. I'm thinking of going ahead with a mid-grade DV camcorder and if I understand correctly I have to get a video capture card for the firewire to connect to my PC. Is that right? Do ya think that I can pull this off with my current system?

Thanks for taking the time to help. If I have to ask one of those kids at CompUSA anything again I may lose it. Unless I'm looking for a really nice extended warranty for the low, low price of only $79.95. :rolleyes:

If you have a DV cam then you don't need a capture card. You will have to have a firewire card to do the "file transfer" to your PC, then use something like Premiere to render the video.

I use a Sony Handy cam with a firewire card and it works great. As far as software goes, if you want something cheap and easy to use you can back to compUSA and get a card and software for like $50.