Camcorder Tape Capture

Question

So, I want to capture from my analogue camcorder tapes using the RGB and from my digital camcorder using the mini-dv output so it never leaves the digital domain.

I recently bought a device that seems to be ok for capturing the analogue though there may be better options out there. I don't have any way of capturing the digital so if anyone has advice that would be good. My laptop is a dell latitude 5480 running windows 10.

I've considered trying to get a high spec PC with xp, if that's possible, as later versions of windows don't have movie maker. My brother transferred his tapes using that setup. Again, any thoughts on this or alternative capture software for windows 10 would be appreciated.

Thanks, Rick

Answer 1

DV can be captured off tape with a firewire interface. Firewire was a data transfer protocol created by Apple, Panasonic and Sony that enabled the transfer of digital Video and data.

Firewire plugs look like this

The era when computers had firewire connections out of the box has passed, so unless you can find an older machine (particularly a mac) with a firewire socket, you'll have to get either a firewire card to install internally, or a firewire to USB converter. Then you will be able to transfer the DV streams to HDD.

Movie maker is so not worth using XP for. There is better free editing software, like DaVinci Resolve which is a professional grade program with a very capable free version.