and transferring? Since you have the camera, just try it. In theory, what should happen is that the disc appears as an external hard drive similar to when you connect any other external storage device (on a Mac, the memory card will appear; on Windows, look in "My Computer" and see if the camera is there), then you navigate through the directory hierarchy and when you find the video, you copy it to your computer's hard drive.
Page 99 of the manual ("Using a Computer") talks about the software that came with the camera and installing it - and which one to use.
If it doesn't work and if you have a tray-loading DVD drive on your computer, you can just finalize the disc in the camera, take it out, put it in the DVD tray and use a DVD ripper (like HandBrake - yes, there is a Windows version, but you need to hunt the internet a bit to find it).
DO NOT INSERT AN 8mm OR OTHER ODD-SHAPED DISC INTO A SLOT-LOADING DISC DRIVE
Please note: It is entirely possible that the USB cable supplied will only allow you to copy stills and video from the MEMORY CARD - and not the DVD disc. The manual is pretty clear about this with regards to Macitosh computers, but less clear with regards to Windows computers... In any case, the included Nero application needs to be installed.
I hope this helps.
Ok, I've searched high and low through many of these posts about transferring video from a DVD-R/RW player to a computer, versus the merits of a MiniDV player.
My wife just bought me a sony Handycam DCR-DVD405 model as a gift, and I don't know what to make of the following blurb from the Sony product page:
"USB 2.0 Interface3
USB 2.02 interface provides an easy way to connect your DVD Handycam Camcorder to the computer for fast transfer of video and still images to your computer for editing. The camcorder can also be used as an external DVD burner, convenient for making copies of your DVDs or burning edited movies."
Does this mean I can pull in MPEG-2 video from the camcorder and import it into say, Windows XP Movie Maker?
At this point, I understand the differences between MiniDV and DVD, so I'm just trying to make sense of the Sony USB 2.0 statement.
thanks.
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