I bought my Panasonic NV-GS11 video camera from eBay and for the cost, it seemed perfect. I liked the feel of the camera, it’s simplicity of use, until I tried to transfer my movie to a PC and that’s when the trouble started!
Normally, when you connect a camera using the USB connection, your PC recognises the device and you can use it straight away. I had no end of problems getting the PC to do this and I thought the driver was at fault.
The answer, in hindsight, is that in the menu there are 2 items for the USB Function, “web camera” and “DV Studio” – the software for acquiring still photos from the camera. Choose “web camera”, connect your camera to the PC via the USB connection and switch on the camera using the Playback mode. Check “My Computer” and there should be a video camera icon with “USB Video Device” beside it. Double click onto this icon will open up a page, where if you start your movie from the camera, you can see the results on the PC screen. Unfortunately, there’s nowhere on this page where you can save the movie itself.
I searched with Google and found the answer. Many people had the same issue but there didn’t seem to any answers. Eventually, I found one reply on a forum way down the page which provided the solution.
Download Windows Movie Maker from the Microsoft page. This is for Windows XP:-
Open Movie Maker and you will see ” Capture from video device” This allows you to save your movie into a directory of your choice and later burn the movie onto a CD using your favourite software.