Mini Handycam

The USB is for digital stills.

What you need to download your video is a firewire (& card) (which I assume your computer doesn't have) so you will need a system such as this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000ML3UMM/202-8273947-2978256

Not true, you can also transfer videos via a USB cable too provided the camera has already placed it into a digital format, for instance, like my Sony DigiCam, that can export both stills and movies over a USB 2.0 connection. Mine is not alone in this either....

My camera has a hard disk in it and the films are recoded in digital format......there are plenty of cameras about that recod digitally either on DVDs, Hard disks or tapes....

Firewire is a bit faster (at this moment anyway) till USB3.0 hits the streets in a few years time.....

Where did you get the silly idea that USB can only transport "Stills"? What USB is in fact, it is really only a Data cable and films and stills can be in a data format on the camera, therefore easily copied to a PC or Mac....!!!

You should not make statements that exceed your own personal knowledge, it just makes you look even more gullible than you probably are!!!

It is true that older analog stuff cannot use USB directly unless the cable has a digitizer built into it!!! But that is also possible of course!!

Now you have learnt something new and accurate!!

Firewire is a bit faster (at this moment anyway) till USB3.0 hits the streets in a few years time.....

Firewire is actually a bit slower but the bandwidth is greater than USB 2.0 and that makes all the difference to me

Video capture software is what you need and it's free.

Your camera might have a "firewire" output. If so, then you computer will need a firewire input card if it does not have a firewire port. Video capture software will do the rest -- and there are many varieties.

On the other hand if your camera does not have a firewire output, then you will need an external piece of hardware (or card for you computer) which takes a video input and outputs either via firewire or USB. One such device is called "Broadway." (I have an older external device called a Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge that works fine.) If you poke around the web for "video capture cards" you will find many.

I believe this camera uses a mini DV TAPE. According to the technical specs the camera has a digital video out and a USB port. (see link)http://www.amazon.co.uk/Panasonic-NV-GS60-Mini-DV-Camcorder/dp/tech-data/B000Q8I148/ref=de_a_smtd

If you can connect the USB or DV out to your computer you mat be able to copy the information from the tape to your hard drive.

I looked at the reviews on Amazon and found the following...

'You can out put the audiovisual signal by way of a DV Out (No In), Mini USB and composite jack plug (Video, Audio left & right) but there is no S-Video. There are also no DV or USB leads supplied with the camera only Jack Plug. There is also no editing software supplied for your PC.

To see a thorough over view of the product you van down load the user manual from the Panasonic web site, www.panasonic.co.uk. '

I have a panasonic camcorder and had the same problem. I use a Sony DVDirect, though mine is an older model and looks a little different. It is basically a DVD burner with a wide range of inputs and does a real time buffer/burn. With my camcorder, I connect my video out cables to the DVDirect and play back my miniDV tape meanwhile the DVDirect is recording the video in. This works with any playback device (VCR, DVD player, video recorder, BETA max, etc.) with video out (S-VIDEO, composite, USB, firewire). The idea being that you can change recording media from an older media like hi8, VHS, etc. to DVD. It does not have inputs for DVI, HDMI, VGA though. It did a good job converting my vacation home movies and old VCR tapes to DVD.

This unit is also stand-alone and does not require a pc.