Hi all
I want to try and load my video tapes onto my pc and edit, before burning to dvd. The dvd's for pc use only (at the moment).
I have a panasonic nv-ds-15b with 400xdigital zoom, all the necessary leads for the pc ports.

What software and hardware would I need to purchase? I have 80gb HD and 1GB ram desktop running XP.

A friend recommended Dazzle 80 as the beginners purchase and said it is very easy to use? Any thoughts on what I need would be appreciated.

Thanks

Your camcorder is a Panasonic model and therefore should have DV out (Firewire) and so I would recommend you use that method to connect your camcorder to your computer. You'll need to check the computer first to see if it has a Firewire (DV in) socket. If it does, then you just need to purchase a Firewire cable with a 4 pin connector on one end and a 6 pin connector on the other end. The 4 pin goes into the camcorder and the 6 pin goes into the computer. If you don't have a Firewire port on the computer, then you need to see if you have a spare PCI slot inside the computer.

If one is free, then you will need to purchase a PCI Firewire card that has to be inserted into the slot. It will give you three Firewire sockets at the back of your computer and allow you to make the connection. This setup would be more preferable to using Dazzle as Dazzle compresses the video too much and defeats the purpose of having high quality video coming out of your camcorder. Using Firewire is also cheaper as the cable is about 10 to 15 pounds (depending on length) and the PCI Firewire card around 20 pounds.

An 80Gb HD is quite small for video capture and editing. I've created video files that were nearly 100Gb in size during the past Summer. Can you delete/uninstall, move or copy files off this drive to free up more space? New larger hard drives are coming down in price all the time and are very competitively priced at the moment.

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

Thanks for the help. I am looking at buying an External HD just now where I could free up a lot of space.
I shall investigate the Firewire possibilities tomorrow and reply.
Cheers