I would like 2 know how 2 transfer the recording from my JVC mini camera to laptop & do DVDs,youtube vidz etc?

Ok so basically I have bought myself a 4pin-4pin firewire lead and it fits in my camera and laptop fine. My laptop has the 1394 socket fine (socket/port/whatever you'd call it). But nothing happens at all. So i figured through my research (yahoo question searching) that you need a "firewire port" to be built into the laptop. Well my dad knows a technical guy who could do it but he won't be round our house for a million years (you know what's it like with some people, probably just my dad coz he doesn't get on with things like that...this technican friend of his Tom is mainly meant to be coming round to fix the PC. No idea why coz dad, me and sister all have laptops...!) Anyway, I need to get the right thing and on yahoo i've never totally got the right answer. What exactly is a firewire port IF it's what I need? My basic request is that anyone could link me to whatever it is I need, how I use it etc and basically how I can transfer video from my camera to my laptop and do youtube vidz

P.S. I am also interested in using Windows Movie Maker and burning films I make on it to DVD/CD? What type of DVD/CD copies do I need to buy that are the compatible ones to burn video files on? Thank you in advance :) My basic question that I've really wanted to know involves many probably, but it's just instructions on how to transfer video to laptop and do youtube videos or burn video to CD.

Since you have a Firewire port on your computer, and you have the firewire cable, and you are connecting that to the DV port on the camcorder, you are almost there...

Nothing will "magically" happen.

Put the camcorder in "Play" mode (you probably want the AC adapter plugged in to the camcorder and the wall, too), launch MovieMaker and "Capture" the video.

Once the video is done importing to MovieMaker, edit the video. Transitions, credits, whatever. When you are done, save the final project... Then Save As... or export using some compression to make the file smaller (YouTube has a 100 me limit, so you mey need to experiment with what is optimal compression for your video project needs. There are several clips on YouTube that can help you with this step.) Be sure to rename the compressed files something different from the uncompressed "main" file - you need this uncompressed main file for later...

For DVDs, you will need a DVD authoring application... like WinDVD. You will need the uncompressed "main" file for this. WinDVD will convert the file to VOB or VRO format that DVD playes can use and compress the file - this assumes that your computer has a DVD burner (not just CD or DVD ROM (read only).

Well there's a bunch a things you wanna do in one....
camera to computer is a firewire cord.
you'll 'capture' the footage to computer....
your options to change the video are:
avi mpeg mov and probably tons more.

so, that's the basics... get your videos onto your computer and the rest is easy... usually you can rightclick on a movie on your computer, and it'll bring up a bunch of options for it based on your installed programs.