I bought my Panasonic NV-GS11 camcorder on eBay and for the price it was perfect. I liked the feel of the camera, its simplicity of use, until I tried to transfer my film to a PC and that’s when the problems started.
Normally, when you connect a camera via USB connection, your PC recognizes the device and you can use it right away. I had no problem getting the PC to do this and I thought the driver was to blame.
The answer, in hindsight, is that in the menu there are 2 items for the USB function, “Webcam” and “DV Studio”, the software to acquire pictures from the camera. Choose “webcam”, connect your camera to PC via USB connection and turn on the camera using Playback mode. Check “My Computer” and there should be a video camera icon with “USB Video Device” next to it. Double-clicking this icon will open a page where if you start the movie from the camera, you can see the results on the PC screen. Unfortunately, there is nowhere on this page where you can save the movie.
I googled and found the answer. Lots of people had the same problem, but there didn’t seem to be any answers. Eventually I found an answer in a forum at the bottom of the page that provided the solution.
Download Windows Movie Maker from Microsoft page. This is for Windows XP :-
http://www.download.com/Windows-Movie-Maker-Windows-XP-/3000-13631_4-10165075.html
Open Movie Maker and you will see “Capture from video device”. This allows you to save your movie to a directory of your choice and then burn it to CD using your favorite software.
I hope this is of some use to all of you with the same problem I had. If you need more help email me at [email protected]
