I hope I can help others because it took me about a couple of hour to find a solution to this problem.
I have a mini DV camera SONY DCR CH51E and windows 7 rc 1. When I connect the camera to the pc the first time I see a baloon in the systray area that tells me “new hardware found, installing drivers†drivers install is OK, I can now see my camera in the list of available hardware.
The problem is that when I plugged the camera both in VCR mode and both in capturing mode, nothing happens. In windows vista I remember that a popup appears telling you if you want acquire the video, but in windows 7 rc nothing happens.
The solution is, first you need to install windows live movie maker and windows live photo gallery, you can download the live installer and install them both. Then you must open photo gallery (I know that you want to import a video, but in windows 7 the DV acquisition module is in photo gallery), goes to the file menu and then, import from a camera or scanner.
Finally the dv importer module opens, asking you the source you want to use.
When you put your camera in VCR mode it ask you what you want to import
If you decided to import the entire video, it rewind the tape automatically and starts importing everything. You will see preview of the file and the acquisition is done at the same speed of the tape, so will be patient.
In the end you will have imported successfully your videos in your pc.
Have fun
Alk.
June 6th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Thanks you very much, its helped me alot and saved my time. Thanks you.
July 9th, 2009 at 12:49 am
Thank you very much. Very kind informations to follow.
I now can do the job so easily. Thanks again
August 8th, 2009 at 5:41 am
Thank’s man, I was wandering where the capture option has gone.
You saved me a lot of thinking…
Yos
November 30th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Thank you! You saved me a lot of time and frustration.
December 26th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Thanks, I have seen this response on many sites now from many struggling people. I am dissapointed in Microsoft for this one… I mean really… Windows 7 is great, and I have been promoting it since before its official release… but to have to download Windows Live for simple CamCorder acquisition… that’s a real pain, not to mention a flagrant attempt to make people use Windows Live. Surely an OS as sophisticated as Win7 would include Video Acquisition” out the box”? Vista did, XP did. Poor show boys.
And have you seen what installs with Windows Live, half an OS it seems!
December 31st, 2009 at 8:36 pm
thank you very much…
January 30th, 2010 at 10:56 pm
Hi
Thought that this might be the answer to my prayers been trying to capture from my panasonic nv-ex3 ever since I loaded win7. Unfortunately live phot gallery just tells me that the device is in use by another programe which it isn’t. So I’m no further forward and have all the win live junk on the system now. thaks anyway.
pete
September 1st, 2010 at 10:08 pm
Hi Pete Newman,
I have exactly the same problem as yours with my NV-EX3.
Did you solve that problem ?
September 2nd, 2010 at 8:40 am
Yes I solved my problem with the technique showed in this post.