Hi there,

I'm after some advice if possible please.

I've got a Sony CCD-TRV49E PAL camcorder and essentially all I'm trying to do is to connect it to my PC in order to convert my analogue video to digital so that I can burn my videos onto DVDs. I've got a DVD burner and I'm pretty sure I have a TV tuner with my PC (it has the aerial socket at the back of my PC). My camcorder is analogue and about 5 years old now. It connects to my TV using a yellow/black lead which has what appears to be a headphone socket which connects back to the camcorder . It also looks like my camcorder has a "S Video Out" socket, and my PC also appears to have the same socket in line with the "Aerial in" on my TV card.

If I'm in need of any additional hardware I'd be very grateful if you could provide me with any tips etc. I'm running Windows 98 and I'm more than happy to pick up any software I might need. In all honesty I haven't used my TV card for a good year or so and I'm not even sure if I have the right drivers for it any more. As you can probably tell I'm a complete novice to this so any information whatsoever would be absolutely brilliant.

Many Thanks
Steve Oliver, U.K.

Hi Steve,

The camcorder you have has a digital output port called FireWire. You will need to (unless your PC has this port) purchase a FireWire PC card and cable to connect your Camcorder to the PC and take the digital video from the camera. The FireWire card can be installed in the PC (fairly easy to do) and will then have a number of FireWire ports where you will be able to plug in the camera. I would recommend Ulead Video Studio 7 Software to use to edit the video - see http://www.ulead.co.uk

Video Studio quite often comes bundled with the FireWire hardware, you could try PC World as they stocl these cards and software.

This may also help - http://www.dvcentral.org/Firewire.html

D-A-L

Hi there,

Which part of the camcorder is likely to house the Firewire output ? Is it the S Video Out socket you're referring to ? The only other sockets appear to be the A/V Out (which is the one the "earphone" jack goes into) and a "RFU DC Out". My Camcorder is a Hi8, fairly old model so I'm not sure if it does have the firewire facility ?

Thanks in advance,

Steve Oliver

.....You could be right, I thought that was a newer model. You could utilise the SVideo output instead. Do you know what graphics card you have in the PC?

Hi there,

My graphics card is a "NVidia GeForce 2 MX/MX 400", according to my control panel. I'm not sure what type my TV Card is though ?

Thanks again,
Steve Oliver

OK save me looking it up is there an SVideo connection on the back of the graphics card where you plug the monitor in?