Connect video camera with the PC

[Akib]

how do u do it? what are the materials u need for this?

would be glad to find answers.

[belal1]

what kind of camera are you talking about? a camcorder? a digital camera (still camera)?

if it's a camcorder, what type is it? is it a DV camera? some (many) of them have a USB port, if so, u just need the necessary cable to pull the stuff to the pc. many also have a firewire port, which if ur pc also has a firewire port, then u just need a firewire cable.

if your camcorder only has the ports for RCA/Composite/S-Video, then what you can do is get a usb video input card, or pci video input card (not graphics card) and grab media through that. Basically once you have the card installed on your pc (whether through usb or pci), u connect the camcorder's cables directly to the card and then use the software it comes with to pull the video. If you have windows xp service pack 2, you can use windows movie maker 2 aswell. But the video input cards usually come with something for movie editing so use that.

if you have a digital camera, connect the usb cable it came with, one end to the pc the other to the camera. the stuff on the digi cam should show up in "My Computer" as a usb mass storage device. You can just pull the stuff from there. Most digital cameras these days have video record capabilities. Some even have a webcam feature which you can use MSN and Yahoo with.

By the way, were you talking about web cam's? if you were...then they usually come with a usb cable and u just connect it to the pc's usb port and install the drivers. Most don't even need any driver installation cuz xp recognizes many of em. incase it doesn't, then use the driver cd that it (the camera) comes with. then you can record stuff through windows movie maker 2, or use msn/yahoo's video chat capability.

[Akib]

yea it's a camcorder
Jazakallah Khair.... :)


(i tried repping u, they won't let me)

[belal1]

yea it's a camcorder
Jazakallah Khair.... :)


(i tried repping u, they won't let me)

:( I tried repping you after I posted the other post but they too won't let me, saying I have to rep others (even though I did) :(

anyway wa feeka baarakallaahu

[Akib]

brother, i went to radioshack today with my camera, and they said my camera doesn't support USB... is there any other way to connect it. my camera is a Sony Hi8 camcorder.
i don't speak all nerdy or geeky so i really can't explain very well...
answers are welcomed bro!!!
(i was trying to PM u, u turned it off!)

[belal1]

brother, i went to radioshack today with my camera, and they said my camera doesn't support USB... is there any other way to connect it. my camera is a Sony Hi8 camcorder.
i don't speak all nerdy or geeky so i really can't explain very well...
answers are welcomed bro!!!
(i was trying to PM u, u turned it off!)

sorry i had to turn it off for personal reasons. you can e-mail me if you need my assistance. it's this user id @gmail.com (i don't want to write it myself cuz some spam bots search the web and copies e-mail addresses from sites so they can spam the crap out of the users).

so you have a Sony Hi8 eh? I have that one at home too... trv6 something if i remember it correctly. They take the 8mm cassettes for recording right. Yeah so basically with that your only option to input a video signal is to use a video capture card or rather video input card.

see even though you don't have a USB port on your camcorder, you can still use a capture card to grab any video and audio signal coming from your camcorder. basically if your camcorder can OUTPUT the signals, then with the help of a INPUT card, your computer can grab the signals while the camcorder is pushing it out. Hope that's not confusing.

here's a few options for the capture devices.

this is what my brother has on his computer so from personal experience i can tell you that it works with some tinkering:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1048731&Sku=M501-1012

if you have USB 2.0 (make sure you have USB 2.0 or else it'll take AGES to upload video to the pc), and you dont want to mess with opening up your pc but you like having extra stuff hanging around, check this out: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1961041&Sku=M501-1208
it's basically the same thing as the above except in a external case. There's a diagram showing how you'd connect your camcorder by the way.

this one is pretty popular when it first came out. they touted it as the worlds first mpeg4 encoder. basically DVD is known as Mpeg2, and Mpeg4 is the latest one (also known as h.246) which gives image quality a little better than mpeg2 and takes up significantly less space. this encoder also can encode the mpeg4 streams into DiVX so you can have very high quality stuff in only a few hundred MBs. here's the link: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=171736&Sku=P67-1086

here's a bunch more here: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_tlc.asp?CatId=1423

see what you like. also try searching for some of these on ebays if you think they cost too much. chances are you'll find it for a little less but i don't know who you trust more, ebay merchants or a big company like tiger.

by the way, before you start encoding any video I highly recommend you read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_codec#Commonly_used_standards_and_codecs
you should be familar with some video codecs so you know what your options are when you want to burn them to CD, DVD or when you want to share with friends/family.

[belal1]

sorry, my mistake. the first link i posted, is not what my brother has. his is different. his picks up HDTV signals, this one does not. I just asked him, he said his costed around 90 bucks. I got confused because of the remote control looked similar.

[Refugee]

:1popcorn:

[Akib]

:1popcorn:
:scratch:

[Abu Mus'ab]

:scratch:
It's called "Nerd Watching"

[Akib]

It's called "Nerd Watching"
there are so many things that can be learned from so called "Nerds"!