Actually, I've had it for a while, just haven't bothered trying to use it with my computer until now. It's a Sony Handycam DCR-HC20. It came with software, which I installed, and it's called Picture Package. Seems like cool software, you can stream the video from the camera, you can set it to automatically add music and fades between shots and edit the video for you, you can save the video footage to a VCD or CD-R, hell you can do almost anything...EXCEPT just save the raw video footage to your hard drive. I have no idea why, but there's just no way to get the plain, unedited footage onto my computer without saving it to a CD first. Sony never fails to amaze me with their lack of common sense. I refuse to waste a CD-R every time I want a video on my computer when I already have to buy mini tapes for the camera. So what I'm asking is, does anybody know some kind of software that can just record video straight from a digital camera to the hard drive via USB?
You should be able to open up the camera as a hard drive. Just open up My Computer and find an external hard drive. That'll most likely be your camera and you can drag and drop the video file from the camera's memory card to your hard drive. I'm not sure if that's how it'll work with your camera but it's worth a shot since that's how it works with my camera.
I actually tried that first time I plugged in the camera, didn't work. I didn't get the Found New Hardware Wizard or anything, that didn't happen until after I had installed the bundled software and started streaming stuff from the camera. And even then, it didn't show up as any of my drives. Could possibly be because it doesn't use any kind of memory stick at all. It's not a memory card camera either, its a DV cam that uses mini tapes.
Know if your computer has a firewire port? I've not tried it myself but you should just need to get a firewire cable, plug it into the output on the camcorder and the input on the computer. Then load up windows movie maker (version 2) and select "capture from video device". I've actually been struggling with the same issue, trying to get some school performance on computer for editing/dvd burning. Particulary annoying that not many computers seem to come with Firewire as standard. Out of 4 that I have full access to only a Sony laptop does, and it uses the wrong type of connection. :-/ Let me know how it goes, if you're ever on msn!
Can't get Windows Movie Maker Version 2, since the stupid update will only let me get it if i install Service Pack 2. The whole notion of an automatic firewall that I can't shut off ruining my connection speed doesn't appeal to me. And I don't think I have a Firewire port anyway, I'm just using my USB.
Well, after spending hours on it, I figured out how to install Windows Movie Maker v2 without upgrading to SP2, and my video works now. Thanks for the help guys.