I am an absolute newbie at this... and a pretty stupid one at that! I have a laptop with an S-Video connection and a SONY analog camcorder that also has an S-Video connection. I have connected the two with an S-Video cable. Is this all I have to do to get this to work? My computer is not detecting the video device. If I have an S-Video connection does that mean I have a video capture device?
chances are that the svideo on the laptop is TVout You can connect your lapto to a tv for dvd viewing or displaying a movie or whatever. You will not be able to capture anything from the camera from this port. Chech your documentation on the laptop, what other ports are avaiaable, firewire? usb? if you haveon board firewire, great. otherwise a firewire adapter could be bought and installed in your laptop
halfpipe is right, mostly likely S-Video on your laptop is going out. I'm not sure if its even possible to capture over S-video, at least not with any software I'm familiar with. Ususally cameras only interface with firewire or usb.