Now that you have your Mini DV camcorder and have shot some video of yourself doing dog agility. We need to connect the camcorder to the computer, so we can transfer the video.

We will accomplish this by hooking up the camcorder and computer together using a Firewire cable. Sony calls it ILink. It's official name is IEEE 1394. There are two sizes of cables, 4 pin and 6 pin. The end that attaches to your camcorder will be a 4 pin connector. If you are using a laptop, then most likely it also has a 4 pin connector. Most desktops will have a 6 pin connector.

So you either need a 4 to 6 pin cable or a 4 to 4 pin cable. You can buy these cables at Best Buy. The only sticking point is that your computer may not have a Firewire port. In which case you will have to get a Firewire card for your computer. Just go to Best Buy and grab one for $30 dollars or so. Super easy to install.

Important your camera probably came with a cable, but that cable is a USB cable not Firewire. The USB cable is used for transferring pictures. It is not used for video. For some reason they never include the Firewire cable with the camera. Even my $2,500 camcorder.

The next step is to plug the firewire cable into your camcorder and your computer. Switch the camera on to 'Play'. If this is the first time hooking it up, you will see little ballon messages at the bottom of the screen. Telling you that it found new hardware and it is installing it.

When it is all done a window will probably pop up listing some 'actions' you could take. Just select 'Take no action' or click 'Cancel'.

In the next article we will use a nifty little program called WinDV to capture the video.