MiniDV Conversion

[MARK9999]

At this point, all I want to do is transfer my miniDV tapes to disc, so as to preserve them.
I have read some of the guides, which seem to be telling me my machine is not suited at present. I have an AMD 550 mhz, with 256 RAM and a 15G hard drive. I have a dial up modem so I'm not really interested in downloading movies off the internet. So, all I want to do is make DVD's of my digital camcorder tapes. What would work for me w/o building a whole new computer from scratch? I'm thinking a read-write DVD ROM drive, plus an input device like a TV card, then the software of course. Am I on the right track?

[Tr!n!]

hi,

think u should have posted this in the capture video section :-/,
anyways dont think u have to buy an DVD-R, u can make divx and store them with a CD-R.
i'm pretty sure u have an Firewire or Usb output on your camera, so u wont need an TV-input either :)
im thinking of buying an DV-camera too and found this on http://www.videoguys.com/firewireq&a.htm :
"The DV spec is a 720x480 image size, at roughly a 5:1 compression.
it is compressed at a constant throughput of 3600 kilobytes per second which averages out to 5:1 compression. its a MPEG2-stream..."
i doubt if the usb-interface can handle 3,6MB/s,
but i see on sony and jvc sites their dv-cameras have usb output...but since i have an firewire input
on my audigy soundcard thats not a prob for me :p
i guess u can capture this and compress it with the divx-codec, as im not at all an expert in all this,
i dunno either witch progs to use :(
Guess u have to use a video-capture program and then use VirtualDub to convert to divx,
but please correct me if im wrong...