Video Camera Movies to PC

Hope you guys can help with this one 'cos I don't know where to go to next.

I've had a Panasonic NC-GS250 Movie camera for 6 months and I've now got half a dozen tapes I want to put onto my PC and burn to CD or DVD. I've got all the cables and the camera came with MotionDV Studio 5.3E LE for DV which I've got loaded on the PC.

Problems:
1. While in Windows Explorer it doesn't show the camera as being plugged in so I don't think it's recognising the camera. (I say "I don't think" because I've had no messages to say anything other than it's a HiSpeed USb object plugged into a non HiSpeed USB and that the object will work only slower). So maybe it is recognised just not showing?

2. As with most things the instructions are very comprehensive but still manage to leave out the steps for dummies version so I'm presuming 2 things - 1. I have used the cables properly and 2. I have to play the movie whilst in the camera and in preview mode when using Motion Studio to copy into my PC.

There is only 1 cable which plugs into my camera and has a USB on the other end which I plug into my PC. (The other cables are for other countries or the VCR etc) There is only one way to play the movie in the camera (as far as I know) and that's in preview mode so anyway these are the 2 things I'm doing.

3. When I fire up Motion Studio the buttons are greyed out. No amount of fiddling can make them non grey so step two which says press this (the PLAY arrow) is a no go and I can't go to the next step which is capture the film. Consequently it also doesn't preview in Motion Studio.

WHAT I'VE TRIED
I've tried to install the USB driver that came on the CD with the camera but the message says something like " you don't have to install a USB because there's already one installed or it's not required"

I've tried to install the Video Stream Driver but it says it can't with my OS (I'm using XP Home).

I've read the book cover to cover and there's a part following installation where it says "Even after following all this it still may not work on your PC", but doesn't say what to do if it doesn't!!! I'm stumped.

I haven't rang Panasonic yet and that's my next step, but for all you PC whizzes out there can you see anything I've missed or something I should try or with the right know how by someone can my PC be MADE to work all this.

Who has the right know how? I'm afraid of ringing the wrong type of technician to fix this and wasting my money. Help please.

Ta muchly
Olly
 
Hi Olly, you cant actually transfer video onto your computer via USB if your video footage is on a mini DV tape. You can if you recorded it onto one of those little SD memory cards that slot in the camera, but I doubt you have done that. Even if you do transfer video from the SD card via USB the quality isnt very good at all. You need a "firewire" cable to transfer your video footage onto your computer, which for some reason never come with the video cameras when u buy them at the shop! Im at work at the moment and about to go home, so if you need anymore information let me know and ill reply later....
 
firewire card starts at 19.00
USB 2 card bout the same
The owners book online for your model states USB 1.x cannot be used to transfer video, only usb 2.x or ieee 1394 (firewire),
USB 1.x can be used to transfer still images from the sd card

If at first you dont succeed read the manual?
 
Adlante said:
Hi Olly, you cant actually transfer video onto your computer via USB if your video footage is on a mini DV tape. You can if you recorded it onto one of those little SD memory cards that slot in the camera, but I doubt you have done that. Even if you do transfer video from the SD card via USB the quality isnt very good at all. You need a "firewire" cable to transfer your video footage onto your computer, which for some reason never come with the video cameras when u buy them at the shop! Im at work at the moment and about to go home, so if you need anymore information let me know and ill reply later....

OMG, is it that simple - I need a firewire cable? OK that makes sense for transferring data. What about the motion studio software - will that also ungrey the buttons or is that a separate issue?

Thanks heaps
Olly
 
Hi again.
You will need to get 2 things. 1 - A firewire PC card (which usually comes with a few extra USB ports as well) that has to be slotted/installed into your computer (kinda easy to do for a computer savvy person). The second is a firewire cable (ieee 1394). You can get both of these things of Ebay for less than $50. If your not an Ebay person you can also get them cheap from a computer fair, they should have them in sydney somewhere, check out http://www.computerfairs.com.au
If you take your computer along they can probably install the PC card for you for a small price as well.
Once you have both of these things, you should then be able to transfer the video into Motion Dv studio. The buttons are probably grey and unusable because there hasnt been a file or video imported or loaded within the program, therefor you can't use any of the function buttons because there is no video to edit, hence why they are grey and inactive. If you still cant get your head around that software you can try using windows movie maker which should already be loaded and ready to go on your machine if you have windows XP. It is a very simple program to use, and you can do some pretty cool video editing with it. Here are two photos of the cable and PC card you need.
Firewire.jpg

firewire_cable_6_4-3.jpg

Let me know if i can help you out anymore...:D
 
Adlante said:
you cant actually transfer video onto your computer via USB if your video footage is on a mini DV tape.
You can if the camera comes with appropriate software. We have a Panasonic GS300 and do exactly that.

It creates a huge AVI file on the PC, and we then use other software to transcode it to MPEG2, and then other DVD authoring software to create standard DVDs.

Takes quite a lot of time and effort, but works fine.

As has been mentioned though, it probably needs high speed USB.

Cheers,
GP
 
GreatPig said:
You can if the camera comes with appropriate software. We have a Panasonic GS300 and do exactly that.
It creates a huge AVI file on the PC, and we then use other software to transcode it to MPEG2, and then other DVD authoring software to create standard DVDs.
Takes quite a lot of time and effort, but works fine.
As has been mentioned though, it probably needs high speed USB.

Cheers,
GP
The reason it probably takes you so long to do it is because you ARE using USB not firewire. Firewire has a much bigger bandwidth (data carrying capacity) than USB. Also changing the format from AVI to MPEG2 will create a loss of quality, so if you wanted the best quality picture you can get, its best to create it into an MPEG straight away.
Cheers
 
Fantastic help - thanks very much!

Now I'm tempted to upgrade my PC (just the box - not the monitor, keyboard or mouse) instead of adding bits and pieces onto my current PC (which I've already had to do twice with a couple of other things). My daughter reckons if I'm going to buy anything make it a laptop so I can take it anywhere. Can a laptop cope with movies, editing etc. Not sure what to do now. And has anybody got any suggestions on where the best deals are?

Cheers
Olly
 
Adlante said:
The reason it probably takes you so long to do it is because you ARE using USB not firewire.
The copying from tape to PC is not the only slow part. The MPEG conversion also takes a long time, and the DVD authoring can take quite a while too, depending on how fancy you want the menus, music, etc.

its best to create it into an MPEG straight away
We don't get a choice as far as I can tell. It seems the software that came with it only creates AVIs.

Cheers,
GP
 
Olly said:
Can a laptop cope with movies, editing etc.
Depends entirely on the performance of the laptop. I did ours on a Dell Inspiron 9300 notebook with no problems.

Make sure you have LOTS of hard disk space though. From memory, I think the AVIs that are initially created are something like 15GB to 20GB from a 1 hour tape. The MPEG files are then another few GBs, and the final DVD yet another few. That can mean 25GB to 30GB per tape for the whole process, if you want to keep all the files until you've finished.

Cheers,
GP
 
Look for firewire card that comes bundled with Ulead Digital Video Studio, that will let you copy tape direct to mpg2. this is a p2 200, ver old and slow, 1 hour tape 1 hour mpg2 in 1 hour. takes longer to author the dvds. faster pcs will render the mpg better. takes 30seconds per minute of tape to render the low res wmv for web streaming.
 
Yes you can Adlante, he doesn't need firewire at all. I have done it myself from a Sony Mini DV Tape using USB successfully with no issues.

You have to ensure USB Streaming is turned on in your camera settings, set it to VCR mode, install the camera USB drivers on the computer, fire up the local Windows Movie Maker program and go to capture video and then press play on your handycam and it'll play the video and audio through to the pc whilst capturing it.

Josh

Adlante said:
Hi Olly, you cant actually transfer video onto your computer via USB if your video footage is on a mini DV tape. You can if you recorded it onto one of those little SD memory cards that slot in the camera, but I doubt you have done that. Even if you do transfer video from the SD card via USB the quality isnt very good at all. You need a "firewire" cable to transfer your video footage onto your computer, which for some reason never come with the video cameras when u buy them at the shop! Im at work at the moment and about to go home, so if you need anymore information let me know and ill reply later....
 
I read a story in APC that hot plugging Panasonic video cameras to a computer via firewire could fry the firewire interface on the camera and that if you do so it is not covered under warranty. Panasonic recommend you switch off your computer prior to connecting it to your camera via firewire. :confused:


Ahh, threads like this remind me why I like OSX so much, all I do is connect the camera to the computer and press just one button in iDVD which kicks off the whole process of rewinding the tape, import the footage, compress the footage and burn a DVD.
 
mdk92 said:
I read a story in APC that hot plugging Panasonic video cameras to a computer via firewire could fry the firewire interface on the camera and that if you do so it is not covered under warranty. Panasonic recommend you switch off your computer prior to connecting it to your camera via firewire. :confused:
Seriously?

I've got a Panasonic GS300 as well and was just about to start transferring my tapes to my PC via my firewire connection. I used to have an old JVC camcorder that I did this on without issue until the damned thing packed it in and I went and bought my GS300.

Greatpig, have you had any issues hot plugging your GS300 into the firewire connection? I'd at least turn the camcorder off and connect it, then just turn it to play. The PC should then auto-detect it and prompt me to transfer the data. That's how it worked with the JVC. Even though its a GS300 I might still go for MPEG format straight away. I think I can select a transfer software that will allow that format but don't know for sure yet.

Still haven't figured which is the best editing software to use yet, my PC came standard with about 4 of them. Any tip on which is best and why? I'm running Windows XP.

Cheers,
Michael.
 
mdk92 said:
YEDIT: seems it's not a problem just for Panasonic cameras http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=64884&page=2
mdk92,

Many thanks. Seems that it is not sufficient to do as I described in my post previously, i.e. plug firewire cable into computer whilst on, then into camcorder whilst off then turn camcorder on. According to that thread you need to make sure the computer is turned off too before plugging in the firewire cable or you could fry your computer port. Here's the specific post which describes what I WAS doing:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=487489&postcount=29

Hasn't happened to me yet but I guess I better adopt the more conservative power off everything approach from here on in.

Thanks,
Michael.
 
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