recording panasonic camcorder dv onto laptop?

Assuming you have a MiniDV camera (small tapes), film onto the tape, then rewind it, turn it off (extremely important), hook up a capture cable (DV to Firewire 400) to your camera and to your computer. It has to be Firewire; if your computer does not have a Firewire port you will need to buy a card. Macs have them by default. The cards are really cheap to buy and easy to install. Once the hardware hookup is done, you can turn the camera on, open your favourite editing program (you can use Windows Movie Maker or iMovie) and find the capturing function (usually File -> Capture). If you need additional help with this step, the program's help section can greatly help you (the shortcut is F1 on Windows.) Once the capturing is started, the tape will play and record what is playing onto your computer. If your tape is an hour long, it will take an hour to capture.

Once one of the above methods is done, you can edit your movie however you want it!

pondering it rather is a miniDV tape based camcorder and USB streaming (low intense high quality video) is in all threat now not supported. setting up a firewire card and port and use a firewire cable to import severe intense high quality DV-format video to the pc by using utilising connecting the camcorder's DV port (not USB) to the firewire port (not USB). Firewire, IEEE1394, DV and that i.link are each and each and each and each of an comparable element - and not USB. USB-to-firewire cable/converter/adapter subjects won't artwork. with any luck your pc has the two a buit-in 1394 port. If not, then with any luck it has an accessible PCMCIA or ExpressCard slot so which you'd have the potential to function a card with a firewire port. If not, the only 2 techniques i'm able to think of of of to get that video in to that pc is to practice an "analog/digital converter" - right (Dazzle) or Roxio between many others. Or... get a working pc or pc with a working firewire port.