Last Saturday, I finally purchased my first digital video camera. It is the Canon ZR800, and I must admit, it's pretty good for its price!

Yes, the motor noise is there, but in most cases it's sort of minimal. It can easily be removed with noise reduction in some video editing software, I heard, and I tried it out with an external microphone, and that really improves the sound.

I'm able to easily capture video using the Pinnacle Moviebox Plus USB device from its DV port from the camera to the computer, with full device control on Pinnacle Studio Plus AND Adobe Premiere Elements!

More on this later

Excellent. The quality of minidv is actually quite remarkable, especially when you compare it with camcorders a decade ago when vhs was still a common recording system and Hi8 and SVHS considered semi-pro.

Have fun... and show us the results!

I will This is such a cool camera I plan on taking many movies with it

Does your camera not have a Firewire port? It would be much better to use that to connect the camera to the computer (that's if your computer has a Firewire socket), a PCI Firewire card and cable costs about 20 to 30 pound Sterling or 30 to 40 Euros. The quality using this setup is much better than using any USB device.

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Better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick any day...

My camera DOES have a Firewire port! What I meant is, the Moviebox Plus device connects to my PC via USB-2, BUT...


It has a DV/Firewire port on the front so it'll suit me until I decide to buy a real Firewire card for my computer.

this cannot be stressed highly enough. Use firewire ONLY. If you've spent a couple of hundred on a nice camcorder then you absolutely MUST spend the extra ten on a firewire card and do things properly.

please don't stop at the last hurdle.

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I'm not young enough to know everything!

Don't worry, I'll eventually get a REAL FireWire card. Here are some good-priced ones...

Firewire Card - Digital Video Capture Cards ieee 1394 card i.link firewire CARD ilink ipod