Connecting the Device

• Connect the Mini DV camera to your computer with the use of a firewire or USB cable. If you are going to connect using a firewire cable, then your computer must have a firewire port. Most Mini DV camcorders come equipped with a firewire port, but some newer cameras have replaced firewire ports with USB ports. Firewire cables come in three different varieties: six-pin to four-pin, four-pin to four-pin, or six-pin to six-pin. Determine the firewire port--four-pin or six-pin--on your computer and camcorder and acquire the appropriate cable to connect them.
  
  

Capturing Footage

• You may have to install necessary drivers so that your PC can recognize your camcorder. These drivers should be supplied with the camcorder. If not, they can easily be downloaded on the internet. When you connect the device to your computer with the firewire cable, Autoplay should detect it and provide you with options for capturing video to the hard drive. If you have advanced video editing software already installed to your computer, then you can capture footage using that. Otherwise the default software that can be used is Windows Movie Maker.
  
  

Creating a DVD

• After you finish with any necessary editing for your footage, you can export it as a media file such as AVI or MPEG, and save it to your computer. Then simply put your file on a DVD-R using DVD burning software. You can use Windows DVD Maker as the default software.