How to Transfer Video Onto the Computer

By eHow Computers Editor

Transfer Video Onto the Computer Transfer Video Onto the Computer

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Before you can use your computer to edit video, you need to get the clips onto your computer. You can either transfer video from a digital or analog source (such as a camcorder or VCR) or find clips from the Web and multimedia CDs.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Step1
Buy video editing software if you want to edit clips. (See "Choose a Video Editing Program" in Related eHows.) The editing software will probably include some sample clips to practice with.
Step2
Using a search engine, such as Yahoo! or Google, run a Web search for video clips and download the video files onto your computer. Most of the time you can just right-click the file and choose "Save As" and then name the file and click OK.
Step3
Check any multimedia CDs or DVDs you have for video files. Copy these files onto your hard disk. All you need to do is open up the folder where the video file is located, most likely the CD ROM drive, and then drag-and-drop it on your desktop or another folder.
Step4
Download your own video from a digital video camera. (You may need to buy a card with the appropriate type of connection port before you can do this. Check the specifications for your camera and computer to see the kind of connection you need.)
Step5
Download your own video from an analog camcorder or from a videotape. You will need a video capture card to translate the analog video into a digital format and copy it onto your hard disk. (See "How to Buy a Video Capture Card" in Related eHows.)
Step6
Consult the manual or online help for your video editing program for instructions on performing the capture. (If you have Premiere, see "How to Perform a Video Capture in Premiere" in Related eHows.)

Tips & Warnings

  • Video files typically end with the extensions .avi, .mpg, .mov, .moov, .movie or .qt. Check your editing software to see what kinds of file formats it accepts.
  • You may already have some video files on your computer. Run a File Find using
  • .avi as your search string. (or
  • .mov, etc.)
  • Video files are huge. They will take up a lot of space on your hard disk and take a lot of RAM to work with. (See "How to Upgrade or Buy a Computer to Use Digital Video" for more.)
  • When using video clips that you did not record yourself, ensure that you are not violating copyright laws. It's fine to practice editing with copied clips, but don't distribute anyone else's video without asking permission.

Comments

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on 5/14/2008 Transferring video to dvd is a time consuming project but preserving those memories to dvd will be worth it. Apple computers come with software to make this easier. If you don't want to spend the money or time we will be glad to help.

Rush Videos
126 1st Ave. West
Alabaster, AL. 35007
(205) 621-3787
http://www.rushvideos.com

clh3453 said

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on 4/28/2008 I have a non protected DVD that I'd like to import into Windows Moviemaker or the like, in order to create and edit clips to email and such. The program doesn't recognize the files whether on the hard drive or the CD Rom drive. Any other way to do this? I don't have access to the original video tape. Thanks
Clarke Henry

clh3453 said

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on 4/28/2008 I have a DVD that I'd like to import into Windows Movie Maker so as to edit into different clips. The program doesn't seem to recognize any files in the folder (whether on the C: drive or CD Rom drive). It's a VOB file, whatever that is. It is not protected. Can this be done some other way?

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on 11/23/2007 is it possible to take a photo of a video

Anonymous

Anonymous said

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on 11/22/2005 I want to share this with any users who have just bought a new PC and want to edit VHS video and Camcorder tapes on their hard drive. If you don't want
to modify the new PC with a hardware capture card, I have the solution. I have been trying for some time to find a way to put my old VHS and HI8 tapes onto my hard drive for editing down and burning to DVD, but without buying a capture card for my PC (this would void my warranty). I have also looked at stand alone analogue to digital converter and paid well for a Hollywood DVD Bridge (on eBay) only to find I still needed a firewire or 1394 card installed! I found that all
I actually needed was to get my tapes converted to regular DVDs (unedited via a conversion company) and to then convert the DVDs to AVI on my hard drive using DVD to AVI software. This has worked out great and the resulting digital video is the full 720 X 576 for good quality DVD authoring. One important point is to make sure whatever company converts your analogue tapes to digital does it at a high bit rate of at least 4000KBPS (kilo bits per second) or you might get artifacts when you re-edit. Make sure you ask for the high bit rate DVDs.

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eHow Article:  How to Transfer Video Onto the Computer

eHow Computers Editor

eHow Computers Editor

Category: Computers

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