I have a love-hate relationship with netcams. They make capturing digital video so easy, but the action you're capturing has to be within five feet of your computer. That's fine if you're vmailing your birthday wishes to Grandma. However, it gets to be a bit limiting while shooting a short film about the escape from an alien prison camp or even a home video of your family reunion.
Here's how it works:
Most PCI netcams, like 3Com's Bigpicture and Intel's Create and Share, feature composite (RCA) video inputs on the PCI card. This input will let you digitize video from just about any video device, as long as you have the right video cord. If you have a USB netcam, you're out of luck because camcorders and VCRs can't plug into a USB port.
Connecting your video device is easy. All you need is a video RCA-to-RCA cord. Plug one end into the composite (RCA) video jack on your PCI card in the back of your computer and the other end into your camcorder or "video out" jack of you VCR.
For sound you need a stereo audio cord. Plug one end into the "audio in" or "mic" jack of your computer's sound card and the other end into your camcorder or "audio out" jack of you VCR.
