Did your version of VS8 come with the Plextor device? If so, then very likely it is a special version tweaked by Plextor to work with their hardware. In that case, you may have to continue capturing with VS8 and then open and edit those files in VS10.
And before you ask, some companies are notorious for their proprietary hardware which will only play with specific software, usually produced by them as well. As far as I am aware, they are not willing to share code with the wide world of software developers to allow the latter to adjust their software to also work with that hardware.
Well yes, as a matter of fact it did. Guess that would explain why it does not work.
Ok, so does this mean that if I were to go and buy a new video camera, I would have to pick a certain brand or would anyone work as long as they used the 1394 connection or usb?????
ALL mini DV video cameras use Firewire and in theory at least, all versions of Video Studio should be able to capture from them using Firewire. There is a list somewhere which you can use to check compatibility, but I am not sure of its URL, I'm sorry.
Most mini DV cameras which have a USB connection (in addition to the firewire connection) only use that connection for transmission of still photos taken by the camera or else low quality streaming video. Only a handful of higher end, expensive cameras use USB 2.0 for capture of high quality video.
Cameras which use mini DVDs AFAIK don't have firewire, but they don't need it. You normally only have to put the mini-DVD in the computer drive. Sometimes, though, depending on the model of camera and type of mini DVD, you have to first 'finish' the disc before Video Studio can see it. And sometimes you have to actually copy the contents of the DVD to your computer and rename the extension from .vob to.mpg to effect the transfer into Video Studio. (We are getting an increasing number of people reporting a variety of problems getting their video into VS from mini DVD cameras.)
I am, to be honest, not sure about cameras which use hard disks, but think they use USB and the computer can see them as just another HDD. You can thus transfer files from camera to computer the same as you would from any other external HDD.
I have a Canon 630i (mini DV like the Elura series), and it works just fine with VS -- from version 7 to the present VS10+. I know we have people on this forum who use an Elura since they mentioned it. But beyond that, I cannot recall any details... Anyway, the Elura series has been on the market for a while now, so I cannot see any reason why it would not work with VS, particularly the most recent versions of VS...
Your plextor need specific drivers to work with VS because it converts analog source files. DV camcorders don't need that and if you run XP OS, you don't need any drivers for a DV cam, the generic XP drivers work well. I don't know of any DV cam that had problems with the XP drivers or connecting via IEEE1394.
Direct capture is not possible from the JVC Everio range of hard drive camcorders, which record in a weird .mod format. You have to transfer the mod files to your PC and then laboriously import them into VideoStudio for editing.
