Connecting analog handycam to computer and recording videos

I decided to upgrade my pc in a way that ı can record my old hi-8 tapes which were taken by sony ccd-trv 65e in to dvd.All the information ı found was about digital cameras and firewire cable but not for analog handycams(as far as ı understood firewire cables only work with dv cameras).I'm thinking to buy pinnacle studio moviebox deluxe v.9 as a capture card but ı even dont know how to connect my hanycam to my pc.Anyone who can help?? Any suggestions?

Welcome to wd forums selin, what connections have we got available ? from the camcorder ?

Generally analogue cams have rca type plugs & sockets, or s-video connections & you can get that into your pc by buying an analogue pci capture card. Cheap tv cards can generally do this, & are about £20 or so up to buy & relatively easy to fit.

What you've been looking at (pinnacle studio moviebox deluxe ) offers a range of connections & then you connect that via usb into your pc, but much dearer

How do you play the movies you have on the camera now?
What interface does it use?

What I have as a cable is, the one to connect the camcorder to tv.I would like to do some editing thats why I choosed pinnacle studio moviebox deluxe as a capture card.But before buying all these which takes nice amount of money I really want to be sure that I won't have any problems.For pinnacle studio moviebox deluxe, they say that both for analog and digital camcorders you can transfer to your pc and create dvds.Do you think that I will need any other cable or another capture card?

So which cable do you have to connect to the TV? There are several types - svideo, scart, composite. Could you describe the plug(s) that go into the TV from the camcorder?

Ok It will be very very funny because I really don't know the name of the cable so I will describe it.In both sides it has two plugs yellow and black, one for picture the other one for voice transfer.

The yellow plug looks like this?

And the audio plug - does it look like this?

Or does it look like the video (yellow plug) but just black coloured?
Which handycam exactly?

the black one looks like just the same as audio plug.

OK, the way it works is this... you plug the video (yellow plug) into the yellow socket on the capture box (pinnacle moviebox). The audio is mono, so you will need a mono rca to stereo rca jack converter like this

They are very cheap. The pinnacle box will take anything so as a piece of kit it is very flexible, but you should (if only for your wallet's sake) consider the advice that Confus-ed gave, you only need an analogue video capture card which are very cheap in comparison. The thing is, do you want to open up your pc and fit a new card or would you prefer to pay for the flexibility and "no hassle" factor for the pinnacle box?

Quote: Originally Posted by NooNoo .. The pinnacle box will take anything so as a piece of kit it is very flexible, but you should (if only for your wallet's sake) consider the advice that Confus-ed gave, you only need an analogue video capture card which are very cheap in comparison. The thing is, do you want to open up your pc and fit a new card or would you prefer to pay for the flexibility and "no hassle" factor for the pinnacle box?

'scuse me while I fall about laughing .. 'no hassle factor' only if you already have fully functional usb - I just gave a guy exactly this choice, except I added that I'd fit & test his TV card & do it all for £40 - he's still tinkering trying to get his USB ports working ! & you almost certainly want to make sure that your USB port is USB 2 & not usb 1.1 or any capture this way will be slower than any anologue capture.

& to add to whats not very clear in the thread, you can edit movies with either method, what differs is how much you have to record - generally with analogue its hard to edit bits out on the fly (as you go) & you end up capturing everything, so now something not mentioned whatsoever, do you have plenty of hard drive space ?

That might seem a dumb question just now, but wait until you start capturing (either method !) & you'll appreciate exactly what I mean - 'lots' is how much you need ..

& of course ! .. there's folks who'll do this all for you if you only have a few movies to convert (maybe not useful for the questioner, but for others later ?) - a random 'yahoo' to illustrate ..

This is a bit different, but it is a first quality interface. It is the DAC-100 interface from datavideo. It uses an IEE1394 connection (firewire) to the computer, thereby doing away with an USB band width restrictions. It has Firewire, Svideo and RCA plug ins and outs. The RCA plugs include audio and video. it doesn't include software, but it works fine with Adobe Premier, Nero and Roxio, as well, probably, any programs which can input data from a digital Camcorder. The interface looks like a digital camcorder to the program. I had considerable problems with keeping video and audio synched with other input devices, and this one did away with those problems.
Jim