Hi Peg, Your old cam or video you are using to play your old tapes with, will have a video out (usually yellow) or an Svideo out socket, this needs to be connected to the same type of socket on the digi cam.

Next plug your cam in to your computer with a firewire lead (also called ieee1394 or DV link or i-link) next put your camera into playback mode with no tape in it and start your capture program on the computer, press play on your video and hope for a picture on your computer, if this doesn't happen you may have to enable 'video in' on the digi camcorder, it will be in the camera menu and will be covered in the manual.

Once you get a picture, click on the capture/record button in the capture software and it will record the signal to your hard drive. Digital video is big, so if you have lots of vids to copy, just do one at a time.

If you are only wishing put your vids on to DV tape then put a blank tape in the digi cam and press record on the camera when you get a picture on the cam screen.(As you have hinted, this is coversd in the manual)

The leads you need will be Firewire and a firewire connection card if you have not got one in your computer already for the digital videos, and an svideo or yellow video lead for the video to digi cam connection.

I hope this helps

Mike W