I bought a fire wire cable and downloaded it using Windows Moviemaker. I heard it wasn't too good and was thinking about buying a basic Roxio program I saw for about $60....I can't remember the name.

I have to check what I downloaded tonight and see if I can edit it.

Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 can be bought for $40 these days.

And be sure that you have both the computer and the camera powered down (POWER OFF) before connecting or disconnecting either or both ends of the firewire cable. Firewire is supposed to be "hot swappable" (connect or disconnect with power on) but in actual practice several folks have encountered "fried" firewire ports on their cameras (and sometimes on the computer).

Some will tell you this is "nonsense" but if you log onto Canon HV20, HV30 & HV40 User Forum - Powered by vBulletin and do a search for "fried port" you will read many tales of "woe".

I read about one case where an employee connected a high end camcorder to a computer with firewire to capture footage from the camera, and the computer didn't recognize the camera. She got another of their cameras, put the tape in it, and connected it.

Same thing.

She went through all 5 of their cameras with the same results and it turned out that the firewire ports in all 5 were now dead.

Expensive!

It can be the cable, connections (something gets a tad bent and shorts), and sometimes just plain static electricity, but camcorder ports can be sensitive.