I have a JVC Digital Video camera (GR-D271). The videos I would like to transfer to my PC are on cassette tapes. The video camera came with a USB cord, but whenever I hook it up, my computer doesn’t seem to recognize it.
I would also like to start recording video on a memory card, but whenever I put the memory card in and go to record, it will only let me take pictures, not record video.
Am I doing something wrong, or do I just need other software…?
The JVC GR-D271 is a miniDV tape based camcorder.
Your computer needs a firewire port. If it does not have one, hopefully it has an expansion slot so you can add one. You also need a firewire cable.
Firewire400, IEEE1394a, DV and i.LINK are all the same thing. USB won’t work (you already know this). USB-firewire adapter/converters won’t work, either.
Connect the firewire cable to the DV port of the camcorder and the firewire port of the computer. Camcorder needs to be in "Play" or "VCR" mode. MovieMaker will capture the video. iMovie will Import the video.
The camcorder manual can be downloaded from JVC:
http://books.jvcservice.com/booklist.asp?Model=GR-D271US
If it is possible to record video to the memory card, instructions to do that would be in the manual – I read through it and did not see anything to support this capability – but I could have just missed it.
Refer to page 45… USB for still image transfer from the memory card; DV for video transfer from the miniDV tape.