How do i put a movie from my camcorder onto my pc and turn it into a mpeg file?

Answer 1

What format of recording does your camcorder use, unless it's MiniDV or MiniDVD, you'll need to buy some hardware from a store like PC World or something to do it.

If you use MiniDV or MiniDVD, Windows Movie Maker should be able to do it for you, I think it automatically converts into MPEG too, (if not, I know it can be done from the settings fairly easily).

Once you've hooked it up, you just play it, the PC records and converts it in real time, and saves it to your HD.
Keep in mind though, that it will take up a heck of a lot of HD at high quality.

Answer 2

If you have a MiniDV camcorder, you need a Firewire cable (most likely) and a Firewire card. This is the most common set-up. I think some systems offer USB2 but FireWire (FW) is the industry standard.

You also need editing software to allow you to retrieve the video from your camcorder.

I'm not sure why you want to turn it into an MPEG file. Your editing software should allow you to convert the raw DV (digital video) so that it can be burned as a standard playback DVD. You could also use Auto Gordian Knot (AGK) to compress the DV file (save it as AVI first (this maintains the quality but takes up a lot of space) and then convert it to an Xvid AVI (this maintains the quality but in a smaller filesize) with AGK.

I think it's around 4GB per hour for HQ video - just so you know.

If you have a TV card with Composite In and your camcorder has Red, White and Yellow Phono sockets, you should be able to hook up a composite video (yellow phono) and sound (Red and White are the sound channels) through your line-in or mic socket on your computer.

Again you will need some kind of editing software. I have heard good things about Womble MPEG Video Wizard. It's less than £40.