Cameras & laptops

A naïve question. I've been experimenting with the video function on my Panasonic digital camera, and would like to save some of these experiments to my laptop and examine them there. The camera instruction booklet says nothing about copying to a computer but says I need a mini HDMI cable to show video on a TV screen. My Dell Studio laptop (four and a half years old) has an HDMI slot, but again the information about it is very minimal in the Dell handbook. Is the laptop HDMI slot purely for output to a TV/monitor, or will it also work for downloading my videos from the camera onto the laptop?

 

If your camera has an usb (mini or micro usb) socket... most cameras do these days - instead of using the supplied (usb to mini HDMI cable ?) - by using the appropriate mini/micro usb to 'normal' usb cable, plugged into your computer... it will appear as an external device and you should be able to navigate to the folder and download your 'films' (and photos) to your computer.
Once on-board, they can be played/displayed 'normally' using the 'built-in' Windows viewers.

Chances are, you'll already have an appropriate mini/micro usb to 'normal' usb cable lying around, for charging your phone, Tablet.

Hope this is helpful.

 

Thanks, Brian. This has worked, although I think I may still need an HDMI cable to get the full benefits of HD video. Odd though - originally I went to My Computer and double clicked on the icon for the contents of the (camera) external disc. The jpegs in the camera showed up, but not the videos, and that's what threw me. Opening up Windows Live Photo Gallery allowed me to download...