Mini DV to PC How?

[Switt]

I got a JVC GR-D230U and it uses the mini DV tapes... I wnated to know how to get the video feed onto my pc for editing and other sorts of stuff. I got quite a bit of racing footage that I want to make into a video... Do I need some type of software or what? Thanks.

[ElderGeek]

Page 39 of this Users Manual will tell you how to connect it to your PC. Looks like you can use either USB cable or what they call DV cable. Which is actually a Firewire (ie: 1493) cable. I prefer to use firewire for video transfer. But this will not matter to you if your PC does not have a FireWire port. If it does, let me know as there area a couple of other things we need to discuss.

So you just plug the USB cable that came with the camera, (you still have this right? ) into the PC. If not, be sure to bring the camera with you to buy one. You will notice the USB plug on the camera is "itty-bitty". Like one of the two on the far left of this pic:


The other end will look like the one on the far right. Get one long enough to set the camera on the desk next to you, it makes life easeir.

These are the four USB connectors available. You can read more about it wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus.


The PC should recognize the camera and a pop up should say "USB storage device detected". Let it go through it's motions before clicking around. The PC will tell you when it is ready to use.

The camera encodes the 'video' into a MPEG4 format 160x120 pixels of resolution. You will notice this will be very small. This will be a problem if you decide to upload this to YouTube or a similar site as they will enlarge it to a bigger 'Flash' format. Sorry to say it will not look that good once uploaded. It will look it's best on other PCs and maybe not as bad as YouTube if you burn it to a DVD to play on your TV.

I'm sure you're saying OK, Ok, just tell me how to get the video to my PC already!! Well we have few choices here.

Option #1:
Do you have the CD that came with the camera? If so, download this software manual to learn how to transfer the clip(s), and use their bundled software to edit your video.

Option #2:
Just do a 'copy/paste function to a location of your choice on your C:\ drive. (Just copy it to your [My Doucments\My videos] folder. Go to [My Computer] or [Windows Explorer] and navigate to the camera, click down into the folders to find your clip(s). The PC thinks the camera is a "storage device", like a USB stick or and actual hard drive. All it knows is there is data on this 'device' and it can read the data. Depending on how big the file is will detereime how long it takes to transfer.

There are a whole mess of freeware/trailware applications to download and use to edit, add music, titles, captions, fades, etc. to your video. Google "free video editing software", download a few and give them a try.

If you have XP or Vista then you already have one called MovieMaker. Go to [START], [ACCESSORIES], [MovieMaker]. For beginners this does the trick. You will find it can't do everything, but it's good for down & dirty.

Hope that helps you out!!

[Switt]

See I got the camcorder off of ebay and it came with everything but the cd. I am not sure what the cd has on it but I am guessing I will need it because everytime I plug it in on my laptop it says I need to install the cd for it... If I click cancel it says the device may not work properly =/ But other than that I can play around with videos fairly well for a beginner once I get them to the PC. Its getting the Mini DV to the PC thats the hard part. lol...

Oh and no I dont have a firewire port or cable, so should I be getting the cable and firewire port to install on my pc? I got a dell desktop and a compaq laptop and neither have one. Thanks for the information you've given me so far! Really appreciate it...

[ElderGeek]

You don't really 'Need" a firewire cable unless you plan on doing alot of video transfer. Without going into alot of detail, firewire is faster than USB. Even though the specs say otherwise. Firewire uses a smaller "wrapper" to move the bits & bytes, so while the 'total' amount of data moved is more with USB, Firewire moves more "usable data" then USB.

You will find a couple of posts on video forums with people with your same problem. They are instructed to get a firewire cable and PCI card for their PC. This 'may' get around the usb driver issue, but I am not sure.

The CD has JVC's editing software and some drivers. You might be able to find the drivers or maybe even the entire CD on the net somewhere.

Or if you see someone who has your same camera for sale, and it includes the CD, you may get them to burn you a copy of it. (best bet!)

Or you could contact JVC to see if they still have the software for download. (don't hold your breath though) I couldn't find it on the JVC site, even in the Archive areas.

[ElderGeek]

I did some more Googling and it looks like you really need that CD.

None of my driver download sites have it and there are others looking for it too.

[Switt]

Ok cool, thanks for the help. The camcorder is great and came with everything but that cd. Manual and everything was there. I was looking as well and couldnt find a thing.

[ElderGeek]

I did some more Googling last night and a few said that if you do go with a Firewire card the CD is not needed, (unless you want the editing software).

I have had good luck with SIIG firewire cards. Be sure to also get a cable as they are not supplied with the card.

[Switt]

Found out my grandpas computer has a port, so I am just needing the wire then... Alright, well if you find anything on the cd or drivers let me know.

Again thanks for the help!

[Switt]

Hey, thanks for your help! I went and got a firewire cable and went to my grandpas house. I plugged it in and it downloaded with no problems at all! It did it fairly quick too. Now I gotta start editing =) Thanks again!

[ElderGeek]

No problem!

While reading around I have come to the conclucion some Video Cameras require the software to download via USB. Lots of people complaining about this in various forums. This seems to be more prevalent with older, entry level cameras.

So, to not have to deal with this problem, just be sure your PC/Laptop/camera has firewire ports.

Another thing to look at when buying a video camera is what resolution does the camera output. Many entry level cameras are very small resolution. Great for email but suck for anything else.