I know almost nothing about getting videos from video camera onto computer. I had hoped that basic moves would be straight forward, but apparently not. I acquired a half decent brand new, that is unused, but old, mini DV video recorder that appears to work perfectly. However, it is Tape, not digital. From what I read on-line, it appears that these recorders transfer files best via firewire or would need special analog to digital conversion stuff.

Fortunately, I have a Toshiba DVD recorder (connected to my TV) that I had almost never used. It does have firewire. After some experimentation, I was able to record to a DVD +rw disc via that firewire connection. I may have created a couple extra little files while stumbling around.

I didn't know if Finalization was required for discs to be read by computer so I took the disc to both my win 7 and win8.1 machines and they didn't recognize any files. I then finalized the disc on the Toshiba. It then apparently wanted me to name the files, but I couldn't figure out how and didn't want to fight with the keypad to do it anyway. I see that the disc still plays on the Toshiba. I took the disc back to my win8.1 machine, and it now sees a whole bunch of files. I later realized most were very small.

This machine has 'MovieMaker' so I ran it. After finally selecting a big 964mb file with a vob extention, MovieMaker took some time doing something to it and gives me lots of strips with little irregular marks on the bottom and a dark screen on the left. No matter what area I press play in; I see nothing but the dark screen.

Of course, I know nothing about movie maker or if it is even an appropriate type of software to use. My basic object at this point is to save my video on the computer so that I could send all or slightly cleaned up portions of it to relatives. I don't know how to practically send the stuff either, but first things first. Anyone know what I am doing wrong? I would like to edit the file, but at the moment, I don't even know how to view it.