How do I get videos from my camcorder to my computer?

If you have a mini dv (cassette) camcorder…. Your dv camcorder needs a firewire connection (ieee 1394) in order to download video, your PC probably did not come with a firewire port, so you will have to buy one and install it, since most computers (except possibly brand new) don't come with a firewire port, your camcorder did not come with a firewire cord so you have to purchase a cord too. Your camcorder did come with a USB cord and that is used for downloading stills from your camcorder. Make sure your camera is in playback mode. The fine print in your manual makes reference to firewire (ieee 1394) connection.

you can not do it via usb because the usb connection is not fast enough to transfer the hugh amount of data that makes up a video. you can consider buying some sort of video capture card for your comp and then tranfers the footage via the composite video out of the camcorder (yellow plug) you can also consider taking the videos to a shop that offers tape to dvd/cd conversion last thing would to be to buy a camcorder that had firewire jack, buy a firewire card for the comp and transfer via firewire. or borrow a camcorder with firewire out and still buy the firewire card for your comp and tansfer