Hi All,

Im looking to purchase a digital camcorder with a built in hard drive that has the function to be viewed on a laptop as soon as it is recorded either through USB or Firewire.

Is there something out there that once plugged into the pc the files can be viewed from the camcorder drive in 'my computer'.

Any help much appreciated.

Thank You

The usual setup is you record onto the camcorder hard drive first, then connect the camcorder to the computer using USB and then either copy or move the files off the camcorder onto the computer hard drive. You're looking to record the files directly onto the hard drive on the computer using the camcorder just as a camera and taking the live feed from it, I don't know if that's possible with a HDD camcorder, but I'd like to find out if some other forum member has done it.

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Hi, Thanks for the reply,

What i was trying to say is that i need to record the video onto the cameras hard drive and then plug it into the pc via usb/firewire. hopefully then the camcorder would then show up as drive in 'my computer' and then play the recorded files from there.

I assume the camera will save the files as avi/mpeg etc.

Once Again,

Thank You

Hi,supermfc,yes you can play the files straight from the hard-drive of your cam,i can do the same with my cam ,sony dcr-sr90,via usb,my pc just sees the cam as a "mass storage device",nothing more than another hard-drive or memory card or whatever.
If i want to transfer the files i just select the files i want and just select "copy to folder",ie "my documents" or "videos" or whatever and it takes a few seconds to transfer but i suppose you already knew that.
Paul.