Panasonic PV-GS19 MiniDV Camcorder w/24x Optical Zoom

I bought this camera when it first came out. It's not a bad camera, by any means, for the price. But, I did have problems connecting it to a computer via firewire. I tried two different computers and neither recognized the camera. I spent many hours,literally, trying to find the problem. Searching the internet high and low. But had no luck. I even bought a thirty dollar firewire cable, to see if I just need a different one. I broke down and finally called Panasonic tech support. The gentlemen spent about five to ten minutes talking with me. He eventually told me they would have to build a case file and get back to me in a week or so. I never heard back from them. I did like the camera, other than that. It's light, easy to use. I got good use out of it. I recently bought a new camera though (Canon HV30), and gave my Panasonic PV-GS19 to my niece. She loves it. So if you are looking for a basic home movie camera or starter camera for a child this is it. You can buy editing programs that come with an adapter (You plug the AV cable into it, and the adapter plugs in to the computer)so you can edit your video. This is what I ended up doing.

Great product! Great image and zoom. Captures color very well. Sound is good. Very compact. Good battery life. Still picture quality is ok. Definately recommend this product.

I really wanted a 3CCD model, but since I'm just starting out and need to buy other stuff, like a tripod, monopod, media, firewire adapter card, camera bag, etc. This fits the budget nicely and it is compact enough to carry it anywhere. Yes the USB connection does work, yes FireWire does work, although it took me a minute to figure out that a connection problem was the fault of the video software version I was using, not the fault of the camera.

My son bought this camera on his own this past summer to take videos of his friends skateboarding, etc. His desire was to get video editing software to add sound effects, music, titles, etc. The camera works great and does what is advertised. Always keep in perspective that a $300 something camera will not match up with the features and extras that a $1000 something camera offers.

The real reason for my posting this message relates to how to connect this camera to your PC to download videos. This is how it will work.

1. Ignore the USB connection stuff in the manual. Good for still picture transfer and webcam stuff only. Look at page 43 in the manual: "PC Connection With DV Interfac Cable". You must use this method to transfer video.

2. You need a "firewire" IEEE 1394 OHCI compliant card in your computer. I purchased and added a PCI Trendnet TFU-H33PI to my 5 year old HP XL773 computer that I also recently loaded Windows XP.

3. Here is the KEY. I bought a cheap SanMAX 4pin to 6pin 1394 cable. Could not get the camera to be recognized by the computer OS. With XP it should recognize the camera as soon as you connect it and turn it on with the camera set to playback mode. XP will treat it like new hardware the first time. I tried everything to reload the card software and search online for drivers and through forums for answers. Then I remembered that my neighbor does video editing. I took my sons camera over to his house and his computer recognized the PV-GS19 Panasonic camera right away. I then plugged my SanMAX cheap cable into his computer... NOTHING. IT WAS THE CABLE. I borrowed his Belkin shielded $25+ cable and plugged it into my computer and it WORKED.

Moral of the story. Don't skimp on the firewire cable. They are not all created equal.

I was taking good video 20 minutes after opening the box.The camera is easy to use and you can compensate for dark scenes quickly by changing a video setting with the cameras joystick.I had no trouble copying video from the camera to my computer ( XP ) via the USB connection. The windows movie maker program worked fine.Be aware that Panasonic does not supply a USB cable with its camera.