Hi John7,
Sadly, just when you thought you hopefully had seen the last of me, I am back. Sorry mate. I now have to astonish you even more with the depth of my ignorance of all things technical.
So far, I have successfully loaded the contents of two 1 hour MiniDV tapes onto an SD card, using the splitter/Mypin combo. These were from a four tape holiday, which I chose to do in two halves in the hope that two 1 hour tapes MAY fit onto a DVD once converted (I now strongly believe that this will not be the case!).
Whatever, now for the stumbling block. When I started the process with the converter software on my laptop, it required me to choose a destination for the converted data. It had a box which said 'Save Target Files in Source Folder', which made no sense to me, then another option which read 'Customise', with a box containing this....C :\User\David\Desktop. So, in my ignorance I thought this was a way to chose a name for the folder, so clicked 'Customise' . All that did was add the word 'New' on to that other load of gobbledegook, lol.
Anyway, I just cannot understand how I transfer the 5 files in that folder into the SD card I have put into my laptop for that. I can find them, just click on Desktop, then on NEW, and there they are, but how do I transfer them onto that SD card? I have tried, but failed miserably.
Just as an aside, it took about six and a half hours for the software to convert the initial MP4 files to AVCHD! So, the original recording from the Camcorder to the SD card is in real time, then the conversion to AVCHD, then burning that to DVD.....this is a job for life, lol. I sure as hell hope I can convince my old lass to choose a limited number of holidays, or I may not live long enough to finish the job, absolutely hilarious. But, I am learning as I go, and it will make the old love VERY happy, so if I finally manage to get it right, I honestly won't mind one bit.
EDIT.
In my ongoing efforts to find a way of doing this, I right clicked here and there and eventually got a dropdown list, sort of 'things to do', which included sending the files to the onboard DVD burner in my laptop (but not to the SD card, typical of my luck).
So, I thought, just out of interest, give it a wiz. when I clicked go, it said it was recording the five files, but in fact it wasn't, progress remained at zero %. What was informative though was the fact that the five files (half of one holiday) now was 19GB !!!!. Obviously then, the onboard burner was clever enough to realise it couldn't be done, but not clever enough to tell me why nothing was happening! However, the important fact now is that this half of one holiday will require 5 standard 4.7 GB DVD discs to contain it. For sure it was an unusually long holiday vid (Australia), but it would be an issue if the holiday would require the old lass to put jump up and down putting10 disks into a player, lol. Possible, but just exploring options.
A rethink perhaps? If I put the SD card straight into my laptop from the Mypin, with the files still in MP4 (so missing out the AVCHD conversion) and burned it to disc there...would it be naff compared to the same files converted to AVCHD and burned to disc on the Panny?
Is it even possible to do that, or do the files require some other form of outside processing before my laptop will accept them?
Cheers, Dave.