Now that the camcorder is connected to the computer, it is time to start capturing the video and saving it to the hard drive on your computer. The easiest and most reliable program that I have come across to accomplish this is WinDV.

WinDV is a small program written by a gentleman in the Czech Republic. It is free to download and use. After downloading WinDV, the next step is to unzip the file. If you don't have a utility to extract the contents of a zip file you can try the program I use for that purpose, IZArc.

After extracting WinDV, just go into the newly created folder called 'WinDV-1.2.3' and double click on the WinDV executable. There is no installation, the program just runs as is. Super easy. There are a couple things to setup in WinDV. Click 'Config' and be sure 'Type 2' is selected. You will also want to set where the captured video will be stored and it's name by clicking on the button with 3 dots [...]

Turn your camcorder on and connect it to the computer with the firewire cable, if you haven't already. Rewind or fast forward on your camcorder to the point on the tape where your video is. Try pressing 'play' on your camcorder to see if you get a preview in the WinDV window. If so then everything is working.

If not something is wrong. Try clicking on the 'Video source' button and select 'Microsoft DV Camera and VCR', the click 'OK'. The program should say 'Paused... Press capture for Capturing' at the bottom of the window.

To start capture, click the little checkbox next to the 'Capture' button. This will enable the program to control your camera. Now click 'Capture', the camera should start playing and the video should be in the preview window. When the video is done, click 'Capture' or 'Cancel' in WinDV to stop the capture process and press 'Stop' on your camcorder.

You should now have one or more video files that you can double click on and play in Windows Media Player. One cool feature of WinDV is that it makes each video from your camcorder a separate file. Like each agility run your recorded at the trial.

If they do not play, stay tuned for the next article. In the next article we will install something called a 'codec', and start processing the videos.