Okay, I'm brand new at this so bear with me. I just got a Sharp VL-Z3U mini DV, and a firewire. I made a small sample movie, then tried to get it onto my pc. I used the Ulead VideoStudio that came with the firewire card, and I got the video to play, but there was no sound and it would not save, I got an error message saying the file format was not supported and could be corrupted if saved. So I tried using Explorer to open up the camera and look inside. There were no files at all, though I know there was a movie. Then I tried Windows Movie Maker. It wouldn't open the file, saying it was not supported. What the hey? So I googled, and found some guy on some forum saying he emailed customer support (which is closed right now, or I would too) and they said it wasn't possible to get the movie off of the tape. He thinks maybe they didn't know what they were talking about, and I'm hoping he's right. No one on that forum answered him.
How on earth could there be a digital camera that wouldn't let you take your movie off of the tape? I mean, the whole reason we got one was so that we could back up our home videos on cdrom, I don't want my tapes to get eaten or degrade!
Please please tell me I am just doing something wrong and there is a way!