PCTech Forums

I have a Panasonic PV-DV102 camcorder and the software bundled with it naturally sucks.It came with Movie Messenger,this only allows you to capture up to 30 seconds of video from the cam to your pc.I've been trying to find a program that will let me convert everything on the cam to mpeg...not just 30 seconds of it.Here's the prob i have there..i found several programs that do just that BUT its through a 1394 port and the cam is USB.I need to be able to set the cam in vcr mode,play the tape and record it through USB.If anyone knows if such a thing exist,please tell me about it.Thanks for any help

liljim

I don't know of any software programs to recommend. Not sure how to tell you how to get this done digitally. You could go analog though, and use a tv tuner card to capture it. If you buy a tuner card with a built in mpeg2 encoder on it, you'll be ready to burn dvd's without having to recompress.

Thanks teststrips,guess thats the route im going to have to take.

Mine is much like Ranger Bob's..The video goes to dv tape and stills go to an sd card.I can pull stills off directly from the mem card but the video has to be recorded from the tape.I have different modes..

VCR- Only the bundled software detects it and allows 30 secs of recording
Camera- Acts as web cam and i can capture live video from here
Memory- card shows up as removable disk and allows removal of pics

Looking at capture cards now...

you may want to look at the Hauppauge PVR250MCE which seems to always get supurb reviews.

check out the tv-cards.com forums... here's a link to the "What shoud I buy" category.

I have one the ATI all in wonder cards, which works well, but does not include built in mpeg2 encoding, so it uses 30-40% of my CPU time durring recordings, and if something like a virus scanner or high CPU load program starts the video gets distorted and choppy in the recorded file.

I actually use my pc as a PVR (personal video recorder - think TIVO) and as a HTPC (home theatre pc - pc hooked to your tv so you can watch recorded files, dvds, show pictures, listen to music, and browse the web right from your coutch.) I use two programs.

One is Snapstream Beyond TV. The best thing about this program is that you can schedule recordings from anywhere. You baisically set up a recording on www.snapstream.net which is a glorified TV Guide, then your pc that records stuff checks in at that website and downloads any scheduled recordings.

The other program i use is MyHTPC - this program allows me to show my pictures and listen to music easily.

I have the Hauppauge! WinTV-PVR-usb2 and really like it. I had a cheaper version which I gave to my son when my wife got this one for me for our 25th anniversary.

Here's a link liljim that might help you in the conversion of DV to DVD.
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/dv/guide.html

Cactus