Carrying out this operation is not always so straightforward as it may appear, hence the reason for so many people experiencing problems, but its best to use a firewire cable from the camcorders DVi socket to the PC, as this eliminates the necessity for using USB video streaming software, however you do have to have some form of video capture software installed on your PC, like for example "Windows movie maker" or "Nero" (which I use).
When using firewire the PC takes control of the camcorder, with the video capture screen showing a duplicate of the controls that the camcorder has, however it should be pointed out that video can use up a massive space in the hard drive, as even a 30 minute video can use approx 6GB on a straight transfer with this size of file sometimes causing editing problems on the PC, this dependant on the spec of the PC.
To be quite honest about it, in most cases when dealing with with "standard" video it much easier to transfer the video onto a DVD recorder (even cheapie type!) using the recorders AV input sockets, as you can select the known quality of burn you want, I never use over a two hour burn though, and in many instances I select a one hour burn to keep pristine video quality.
Needless to say once the DVD is made you then transfer the video into the PC for editing.
Regards to cables for DVI transfer, you need a 4 pin (one end) firewire cable to whatever socket the PC has, this can be 4 or 6 firewire.
The purists might try to maintain that using the camcorders AVI connection takes away from the so called perfect digital copying, however the end result of using a DVD recorder transfer will match up to the best of the digital copy, and in many cases exceed it! (Once again when referring to standard video, not HD)
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