How can I connect my camcorder to my laptop, and record what is on my tv screen onto my laptop all at once?

Question

I have a camcorder, and a fire wire cable. I plug the fire wire cable into my fire wire port in my laptop and cam corder. I then take my cables(yellow/red/white) and plug them into my jacks on the output part of the vcr(that is built into the tv), and the camcorder. When I play something that is recorded on my vcr, I can't get it to record onto my laptop or show up on the screen, do I need an S-Video cable??

Answer 1

You need Composite A/V OUT from TV to your camcorder - it may be the VCR that is causing problem as the CAMCORDER should act as VCR, you see, your DOUBLING IT if that makes sense...your telling your computer I have TWO VCR like utilities, you only need one, use your cam, FORGET THE VCR, let camcorder act as it!!!! Go ahead mate, try a purer connection...perhaps an S-video cable as you said (instead of your composite A/V cable - the yellow, white and red) OUT from TV, plugged into camcorder and a plain firewire out from Camcorder to your PC, that way your getting a straight signal right through the camcorder..actually you may not even need the camcorder with certain software, unless your planning on saving and ripping files. word

Answer 2

You need a device to capture the video. If it is not built into your laptop (and since it does not show up on the screen, you apparently don't) then you have to consider a video frame grabber card (if they exist) or a USB TV tuner with video in - I use the now out of date AVerMedia AVerTV USB which worked well with Blaize Media in a short test run. More up-to-date stuff on their site.
http://www.aver.com/multimedia.html

Answer 3

you're trying to use the camcorder as a pass through directly to your computer. unless your camcorder can do this, as well as your editing program, your system may not have the capability.