This morning I woke up again all set to give it a go again with the video camera and getting the dumb USB drive to work with the computer. Finally discovered I need a fire wire (see I am learning so much!) and I didn't have one of those so back to Radio Shack I went. They (go figure, just my luck) were OUT of the dumb fire wire I needed but they will get more tomorrow. I left feeling quite annoyed, but there was nothing I could do about it.
On the way to church I came up with a new brilliant plan, my grandma's video camera uses the same tapes I could use hers to as the camera to get the video off of my tapes (does that make sense?). So I asked Brandi to borrow it for me and low and behold my grandma's came with ALL the stuff (cords, discs, etc). So excited about my new plan, after church I picked Brandi up from my grandma's to work on our project some more. She continued to go through the thousands of photos while I tried to install everything I'd need to use my grandma's camera.
I quickly ran into trouble...again...it turns out that the disc that is needed for the camera will only install on Windows 98...who in the world runs windows 98?? I once again went searching for an update, no luck. After once again doing an endless search online give up and call Panasonic's customer service and - yes you guessed it - they were close. At this point I was about ready to scream, l throw ALL the equipment out the window and quit my project, until I remembered that Mark (my neighbor & employer) was really into making videos so I called him. He said he had a fire wire that I could use! He told me to bring my video camera over and he'd show me how to set it up. At this point I was thinking "wow this is awesome, my string of bad luck is changing'! So I ran over to the Harrington's, but once again I ran into bad luck.
Mark immediately told me that all I needed was the USB cord and I should be good to go. He told and showed me that he used Windows Movie Maker for his videos and while trying to show me how to find my camera on the computer realized it wasn't working. He then offered to let me borrow their video camera since it too used the same video tapes, so he decided to try it with that one and that to didn't work. He then remembered that he did need a fire wire cord. After spending a good 20minutes searching everywhere for theirs finally gave up.
So tomorrow I am heading back to Radio Shack to buy a fire wire cord and then continue working on my project with HOPES that I can get the dumb video off the tape!! Mark also offered to help, I think he'll be sorry he offered - at this rate the 'project' is going to be a couple hours long - LOL - and we can use any and all of his equipment to get it done! We probably won't take him up on his offer, but at least we have someone right across the street to help us when we get stuck!
Wish me luck for tomorrow!
