is the USB cable included with the PV GS400 a Firewire or just USB? Also, should the camcorder be turned off when connecting to a computer and then turn it on, for capturing video. I now have Premiere Elements and went to capture and It says that it does not detect date and time to be able to divide the tape footage into clips. I was wondering if the provided cable was not enough to capture send all the info to the software from the camcorder or what.

My PAL version came with usb only. I capture via firewire. I use an older cam for capture. This is permanently connected to my pc. I only switch the cam on before capturing video and after booting the pc. My system, XP with SP2 and Edius, has no problem recognising the cam and capturing clips.

I am unfamiliar with Premiere Elements. Why not just try a trial capture for say 30 secs and see what you get? I doubt that date/time onfo is significant in the context of the whole video data stream that you capture.

Steve,
Panasonic recommends you turn off both the camcorder and computer before connecting them. As a practical matter, most of us just turn off the camcorder, plug in and turn on the camcorder.

Premiere, Vegas and other capture/editing software have trouble capturing video over USB. If they capture at all, there will be no audio. USB is only recently arrived on the DV scene and editing software has not completely embraced it. Your best bet is to use Firewire. If you continue with USB, you can use MotionDV or Windows Movie Maker to capture, then import the file into Premiere. You won't get scene detection this way. Also, if you want to export your edited project back to miniDV tape, you will have to use Firewire as USB doesn't support it.

Thanks for the help everyone. I went and got a FireWire (4pin to 4pin) and hooked everything up once more and everything worked as intended. I had been trying to capture video from my GS 400 to a laptop via the USB cable provided with the camcorder (it doesn't work). The FireWire worked excellently and the Premiere Elements software got all the info it was looking for this time. Apparently, the USB does not send "date/time" information with the image so the software couldn't divide the raw footage into clips. It will also not allow the "device control". There may be some settings to adjust in Premiere Elements that allows USB but I am still learning about it.