I have Video Camera issues.

Software issues with video camera and transfer lead?

• okay (yes, i like to start a question or long answer with okay...)... so for my birthday last year, my dad bought me a camcorder (or video camera, which i prefere to call it)... but as it was a MiniDV camera, i found i had no way to transfer the video to my computer for editing, and/or uploading. i tired every... and i mean EVERY option... so don't be telling ym to jut get an extension slot card thingie, because i don't have the slots, no firewire port sorry.. back to the point... for christmas, my dad found me a very simple answer, that i didn't know existed. basically, it's a little wire thing, with ports for composite video, and s-video. i have the rest of the leads for the camera. i managed to get a couple of videos across on to my laptop, and i even set the camera up as a webcam at one point... but all of a sudden, my laptop is not detecting the camera properly. when i go into the control panel i find that it can detect the caqmera, but it can't get it to work. when i use the software i have been using, it tells me "failed to initialise camera" i tried re-installing the driver software for the lead, and even the software i used to transfer, but it still won't work. the actual composite video and s-video cables work, because i can still connect to my television... sorry about all this... but can anyone help?? what can i do to get my camera to work properly... and it's all from ebay, so no returns...

• Answer:

  MiniDV REQUIRES FIREWIRE. No way around it. You should load your software on another PC with Firewire and capture your video that way. Then, you can move the AVI file over to your other computer for editing. The problem isn't the camera, it's the fact that you don't have a Firewire port. You can always install Firewire on your computer.