If you are connecting via USB, then it could be possible in the Edit window, to locate your camera, shown as a drive, then find the video files and drag and drop them onto the timeline. When using the capture feature, i.e. record, this will only work via firewire.

Cheers M o' L

There's a bit (big) of a problem with Man 0' Lakes' suggestion. Your project file ( MVD or MVP) will note the location of your objects on an 'external drive' and won't be able to find them again unless you have your camera connected. You must copy (as asoeli said) from the camera to your computer hard drive.

Notes: Many users recommend that resources be on a different drive than your program which is on C:. Having original clips on an external drive is OK as long as it is attached and seen as the same drive letter when you resume editing. If not you'll get a 'Can't find...' message and get the option of locating things manually. Your camera is seen as an external drive but that's not much use unless you never erase your recordings or change memory cards etc!

Regards,

Carl

Thanks everyone. So I can forget about controlling the camera using Edit Pro which I used to be able to do on my previous camera a Sony mini-dv which had a firewire connection. But now with thumbnails i can just dump to the hard drive and pick and choose.

Cheers.

Exactly! With mini-DV you had to make a realtime 'recording' the playback from the tape even though it was in digital format to begin with. No dropped frames from slow analogue to digital conversion off old tapes! The newer cameras store the digital data in essentially the same structure as a computer disc so you simply copy from one medium to another. Much quicker and easier, though there is a downside -- the data is generally much more compressed so editing puts a greater load onto you computer.

... on my previous camera a Sony mini-dv which had a firewire connection. ...