Hi everybody

I just found this forum and registered. I have very little knowledge and hope that someone will be kind enough to help me.

I have a wireless video camera (ccd) and receiver (Swann) and a small LCD TV. I can connect the the wireless camera receiver to the mini TV and view video images from the CCD camera. I want to use this to put the small camera in one of my model aeroplanes and see movies of the flight. Easy so far... but I want to record the movies.

What I would like to be able to do is to record from the video receiver onto my JVC camcorder. My camcorder manual shows how to record from another video device through the digital video (DV)sockets. My video receiver only has a red and a yellow phono output - I believe they are called RCA connectors.

Is there a way that I can convert the red and yellow outputs from my receiver into the camcorder? The manual shows that the camcorder can feed video to a TV / whatever from the AV output (looks like a little jack socket) to the RCA adapter behind the TV.

In short, what I am asking is - is the AV socket on my camcorder a 2 way link and could I use it to input AV signals and record them onto digital tape?

Any advice will be most welcome, thanks.

Jack

You need a camcorder with AV in. DV in is for recording from a computer.

Some camcorders, about 20% maybe, have av in, it should say in the manual.

I hope you get it sorted as it sounds very interesting and I for one would love to see the results.

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The "norm" for cinc (or RCA) cable is red = left audio channel, white for right audio (although this is far from gospel and sometimes is the other way 'round) and yellow for video. So the yellow socket should be analogue video.

If your camcorder has a yellow socket marked as "video in" then it should work.

I suspect (from your description) that the camcorder has a small av socket (looks like a 3.5mm mini headphone socket) which is normally only for the camcorder to output to a television or suchlike. Unless it can be switched (in/out) then it will only be one-way ie: out.

You can't plug analogue video into a digital input without converting it first.

So, it sounds like you'll have to look for another solution. Either a camcorder which will accept video-in, a portable video recorder (expensive) or a laptop with analogue video in (also expensive).

Thanks guys - it looks like I have to find out more about my camcorder! It is not a high spec job so I am not to hopeful re. AV in. It does, however, have an 'Edit' socket just under the AV socket (same form of socket). Might this be a 2 way link?

The fallback option is to download from the wireless video receiver to my laptop. I am guessing that I would need to get some kind of analogue video capture device. Any clues?

If it goes that way - can anybody give me a clue as to how much disk space I will use per minute of video time? I am anticipating that each model flight would last 15 minutes max. I have about 70 Gb available on the laptop but I understand that higher resolution means bigger data files.

Thanks again for being helpful to a newbie

Jack

As you have a laptop and your expansion possibilities are limited you could purchase a Canopus analogue to digital convertor (plug your little camera into it and connect the Canopus to the laptop). It will convert the analogue video to digital and make it easier on the laptop to store it. Although having said that, using a laptop to do video work on wouldn't be my choice as the vast majority of them are too under powered and not up to the job. Digital video requires 3.6Mb/s of storage which equates to 216Mb for one minute or 4320Mb (4.3Gb) for 20 minutes of video at DV quality.

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Thank you for that NikoSony, I will look into it. My laptop is brand new with Duo processor and 80 Gb hard drive. My flying sorties are unlikely to exceed 20 minute duration so I might get away with it.