Panasonic PV-GS9 MiniDV Camcorder w/20x Optical Zoom 800x digital zoom upload problem?

Question by Kaoru: Panasonic PV-GS9 MiniDV Camcorder w/20x Optical Zoom 800x digital zoom upload problem?
I have a Panasonic PV-GS9 MiniDV Camcorder w/20x Optical Zoom 800x digital zoom and I’m having a hard time with trying to upload it to my vista laptop. It didn’t come with any software and I have a USB and when I plug it to my laptop, it just makes the ding noise but no automatic play dialogue. My Windows Movie Maker doesn’t detect it either. A little help? It’s really important… I have to edit my uncle’s funeral tribute… thanks in advance

Best answer:

Answer by Little Dog
The Panasonic PV-GS9 is a miniDV tape based camcorder.

USB won’t work. You need to connect the camcorder’s DV port to the firewire port on your computer using a firewire cable. If your computer does not have a firewire port, hopefully it has an expansion slot so you can add one. Firewire400, DV, i.LINK and IEEE1394a are all the same thing – and they are not USB. The USB port on miniDV tape camcorders is normally used ONLY for transferring stills from a memory card (if your camcorder does that) and maybe web-streaming.

Nothing will “pop up” or happen automatically. Once the camcorder is connected with the firewire cable (not USB), and the camcorder is also connected to the AC power adapter (which is plugged into a working wall outlet), the camcorder needs to be in “Play” or “VCR” mode.

Windows: Launch MovieMaker and “Capture” the video or use WinDV to import the video then drag that file into MovieMaker for editing.

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