Importing video into your computer for editing or general CYA.

You need

- video camera with a DV (firewire) out port

- computer with firewire port (note the cool little symbol, almost looks like a biohazard warning)

- firewire cable that matches your ports (4-pin to 4-pin in this case)

How to do it.

Once connected, you should see this dialogue box. Select “Capture Video” and press OK.

If the dialogue box does not appear, click “Capture from Video Device” on the task menu.

If it’s still not there, it’s broken, go home.

In the next dialogue box

-give the movie a name, this is not the name of your finished product but a name for the movie (.wmv) file that will be created of everything you import

- note: wmm will only import to the hard drive (C drive) of the machine you are using

-click “Next”

In the next box “best settings for my computer” will give you reasonably good results. I prefer to click on the drop down menu and make a choice.

For a pretty good video to be played back full screen try “Video for Local Playback (1.5 Mbps)”. Each minute of video will take approximately 10 mega bytes of space and won’t break your computer trying to work with large clips. (I hope)

For a smaller video that will load quickly and be easy to work with, try “Video for broadband (512 Kbps)”. This will be “YouTube” size (320x240) but somewhat better quality. Each minute of video will require about 3 megabytes.

For something that you want to put on the web, try “Video for broadband (150 Kbps)”. Each minute will need about 1 MB of space.

I prefer “Capture parts-manually”.

If you are recording straight from the camera to a computer (no tape in camera), this will be your only option.

You can control the play/rewind etc functions from your computer on this screen.

Click “Start Capture” to begin and “Stop Capture” then “Finish” when you have captured what you need.

Don’t try to be exact, start before the part you need and let it go past it. It is very easy to cut out the excess in Movie Maker.

You can begin editing you footage now or exit and come back to it later.