connect pv-gs120 without firewire

April 18, 2011 7:11 AM

Can a Panasonic PV-GS120 be used for streaming video without a firewire port? Plus more questions!

A community I volunteer with purchased some equipment hap-hazardly without checking compatibility. Their goal is to stream Video from various events onto UStream and saving a copy on their DV tape.

This is their equipment:
Panasonic PV-GS120 Camcorder
Dell XPS laptop, Windows 7, no Firewire port and no expansion card port.

My specific questions, can they use a ilink dv to USB adapter? I think Pixela used to make one, and you can find it on ebay now?

Can they output to RCA and have a RCA to usb input card? or would this not work with live video?

Are they pretty much screwed, and should just purchase a high quality web cam or get a cheap windows XP laptop with firewire port?

thanks!

posted by fozzie33 to computers & internet (2 answers total)

What kinds of inputs does the laptop have? It looks like the camcorder has:

S-Video Out
Mini DV In/Out (IEEE 1394) - firewire that you said the laptop didn't have
USB
Analog In/Out

Most laptops have at least a USB port.
posted by jillithd at 3:04 PM on April 20, 2011

The USB on this model wouldnt work for the intended purpose. The USB is only an interface to the memory card (SD card, if memory serves?) which is really only used for still pictures.

You're right that FireWire ("ilink") is the turnkey solution, if the machine had it. I'm not aware of anything that would adapt that to USB for this purpose: the signals are fundamentally very different.

If you can find an interface that'll take the RCA signal and go to USB, that would get the job done. Unfortunately they may be prohibitively expensive. I recall a product called "pyro a/v" for this type of connection, but may have been FireWire-only anyways.

Unfortunately the cheapest option may be to get an inexpensive pc tower you can install an inexpensive FireWire pci card into, and just use that. Or another laptop with FireWire built in, as you mentioned.

It's a good camera, though, I enjoyed mine for years.

Good luck!
posted by churl at 2:31 PM on May 24, 2011