I've been told that all I need is a firewire cord to connect to my personal, which has the firewire port. I’ve windows XP, and have also been told it comes with everything needed to put videos on my personal, is this true? If I go out and purchase a firewire cable will I be able to put videos on my personal?
Answer:
All miniDV tape based camcorders - including your Sony HDR-HC26 - use a firewire cable to connect the DV port of the camcorder to the firewire port of the computer. This assumes all the ports and cables are operational. With the camcorder connected and in “Play” or “VCR” mode, nothing will “pop up” on the caomputer - but Windows MovieMaker should be able to “Capture” video from the camcorder. It is normally that easy.
Since we don’t know what personal you have, we don’t know which firewire cable you need. The DV port on the camcorder is a 4-pin firewire jack, so that identifies one end - what we do not know is if the computer's firewire port is w 4-pin or 6-pin firewire port (which would define the other end of the cable. I got a firewire cable the other day at Fry's Electronics. It is made by Belkin. The firewire cable itself has 6-pin firewire connectors on both sides - but it came with converters that can change the 6-pin into a 4-pin connector… ~$14. Works great.
USB won’t grant transfer of DV from the camcorder to the personal. USB-firewire converter/adapters will not work.