My laptop isnt recognizing my Panasonic NV-GS17 camcorder?

[2010]

My laptop is not recognizing my cam corder. I have connected the usb and port to the camcorder and my laptop is not recognizing anything. i cannot get the videos onto the laptop. I went to my computer on windows and nothing comes up.
Does anyone know why this is?

[NYC fan]

That camcorder uses FireWire, not USB, to transfer video. The USB cable is for still photos.

If you have a FireWire port on your computer (4-pin, 6-pin, or 9-pin, any one of them works), you can connect a FireWire cable from the 4-pin port on your camera (the DV port) to whatever size port is on your computer.

If you don't have a FireWire port, but you have an expansion card slot (i.e. PCMCIA, ExpressCard34, PCIe, etc.) - you can get a FireWire card to add a port to your computer.

If there's no way at all to get FireWire on your computer, you need to settle for a USB capture device like the Dazzle by Pinnacle. You lose some quality, and it'll be difficult to re-capture exactly the same video from the tape if you ever need to re-capture it (because those devices don't carry the "timecode" information from the tape), but it's better than nothing.

Good luck!

[NYC fan]

That camcorder uses FireWire, not USB, to transfer video. The USB cable is for still photos.

If you have a FireWire port on your computer (4-pin, 6-pin, or 9-pin, any one of them works), you can connect a FireWire cable from the 4-pin port on your camera (the DV port) to whatever size port is on your computer.

If you don't have a FireWire port, but you have an expansion card slot (i.e. PCMCIA, ExpressCard34, PCIe, etc.) - you can get a FireWire card to add a port to your computer.

If there's no way at all to get FireWire on your computer, you need to settle for a USB capture device like the Dazzle by Pinnacle. You lose some quality, and it'll be difficult to re-capture exactly the same video from the tape if you ever need to re-capture it (because those devices don't carry the "timecode" information from the tape), but it's better than nothing.

Good luck!