Anyone got any suggestions here?
I'd like to edit my videos on my PC but I have limited knowledge on the subject.
I'd like to plug my (analogue) camcorder into my PC, edit the film then transfer it back to a normal video and/or save it as a VCD without any loss of quality.
What would I need to do this and how much do they cost? Anyone ever try it and any tips?
I dont have a firewire por so it would have to be something like phono in and out.
Can I also transfer from a normal video player to do the same with the videos I already have?
Thanks

I've only experience MiniDV editing, but I've heard good things about the Dazzle devices. They have both composite video (RCA/phono) and S-video connections for your camera and USB and perhaps parallel connections to your PC.
They usually come with some basic editing software.
The way you would use it is to plug your camera or video recorder into the Dazzle box, play the video and it would digitise it and store it on your hard drive.
Things to look out for:
1. Might need a fast machine
2. Lots of hard drive space
3. Quality might not be great

Dazzle box...P3 with 500 MHz is good enough....harddrive space should be available, at least some 5 GB otherwise cutting and inserting and copying and clipping...will be a pain in the neck...quality is good.
But....you need also video out...and this makes it more expensive. With any USB connection running the video make sure that nothing else uses the USB as it will degrade the performance and quality...

I use Pinnacle studio DV, which is for DV, but they do a similar card called the plus which allows analogue capture as well as DV <a href="http://www.pinnaclesys.de/uk/frameset_id.asp" target="_blank">Pinnacle</a> there is a magazine available that has a site with a forum on that may give you some better ideas <a href="http://www.computervideo.net/" target="_blank">Computer Video</a>.

I would recommend at least a 20GB HDD specifically for video editing. And one which is at least ata 100, that will stop frames being dropped and allows plenty of space for capture and editing, off the top of my head 15mins of high quality video uses 2 or 4GB of storage, this is a limitation of the Windows operating system upto W98 not sure about XP though.

Hope that helps :)

By the way, if you find that you run out of steam with the editing software supplied with any of these cards, I *highly* recommend Vegas Video from Sonic Foundry. It is now at version 3.0 and I find it incredibly easy to use but very powerful. It is Windows only and actually looks like a Windows app.
I tried using Premiere, but as video editing isn't something I do on a daily basis, found it too complex. Vegas 3.0 is now being compared favourably to Premiere.

I will second the Pinnacle Systems cards suggestion. I use a DC-30 Plus for analogue capture. Be prepared to sacrifice a lot of hard drive space though as the captured files can get very large, but this is true of any card you buy. It really depends on how much you want to spend.
By the way, when I bought my capture card, they were giving away a copy of Adobe Premiere 5.1 free which I highly recommend. Great software/hardware combination.