I have what used to be an awesome video camera that uses Mini-DV tapes.
Camera still works and it has a firewire output. I'm hoping to use this to my PC rather than analog outputs to a device like this http://www.amazon.com/Elgato-Video-Capt ... roduct_top

Anyone worked with Windows Movie Maker or alternatives to capture video at high resolution from a camcorder? Since the tapes are digital I'm hoping to get to the video data with as little degradation as possible. I've messed around with things like this on and off but now I need to do a good job on these and convert a fire safe completely full of tapes to digital before tapes degrade or my camera breaks.

Frickin local RadioShack wants $35 for a 6 foot firewire cable, jerks!
Better cables on amazon for $5.

Monoprice.

I got some pretty good speaker cable from Mono and some from BlueJeansCable who is known for very high quality with minimal markup. The BlueJeans cable is substantially better (and 3x as heavy in the same gauge) but for most uses no one would benefit from it.

The HDMI and RCAs I got from Monoprice were dang good for the money as well.

I have a Monoprice praise thread at GH with links and other recommendations.

Patience is required.
http://geekhack.org/showthread.php?6017 ... -Monoprice

Check these guys out too http://www.bluejeanscable.com/
Some good science on their site as well with no smoke. I got the Belden 5000 series cable in 12AWG and it's amazing stuff.
http://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/speaker/index.htm