Hi I'd be grateful for any pointers as I've absolutely NO experience in this field.

I have a Panasonic RX18 camcorder that records on to VHS-C tape. I'd like to transfer my library of video to my PC, edit and save to CD for posterity.

I have an Athlon XP2100, an 80GB hard disk, a NVidia Geforce Ti 4200 graphics card and a CD RW drive. I don't have firewire, and the camcorder doesn't have a firewire port anyway as far as I know.
I don't want to shell out too much at present, I'd really just like to dip my toe in and see how it goes.

I believe I need an analogue capture card (any suggestions) and some editing software (suggestions again be helpful).

I read some reviews about Pinnacle Linx USB that would see to fit the bill but people have said there are problems with sound synching with the video.

Any help, pointers etc gratefully received.

Cheers

Simon

[MarkE19]

Your cam is analogue and therefore will NOT have a firewire port!

You say that you have an 80Gb disk, but I assume that not all of that is spare. Analogue capture takes about 1Gb per 15 minutes approx. and you need more space for editing etc.

To capture you can get something like the ATI Radion All-in-Wonder graphics card that also has analogue capture. Do a search of www.ebuyer.co.uk or www.dabs.com etc to find more details/prices.
Or you could install a firewire port (around £15) and get an analogue to firewire converter. These cost around £200 up, but a lot of people do get them to capture like you and then sell them off cheaply once finished.
Or get a DV camcorder with AV & DV inputs. Be careful if going this route as a lot of cams do not have inputs enabled. This willl obviously be a good route if you do want to upgrade from VHS-C (Yuc! ) and saves you spending money on something that will be redundent is a few months time!

Software is wide open. The AIW will come with basic software, or if you have Win XP then you have MS Movie Maker already. Upgrade this to MM2 (free download from MS web site ) and that will do the job.

Any analogue capture will have problems with lip-sync as the sound gets split from the video. The capture card will only capture video and sound gets to the PC via the sound card.

Well, there are a few pointers to get you thinking. Hope they help. Let us know what you decide or if you need more help.

Mark.

[MartinImber]

DOes your video card have video in?

Ta - Thanks for the help - I'll see where this takes me.

simon