Images on XP: (Camcorder Insider).(video editing with operating system Windows XP; includes notes on Consumer Electronics Association conference)

Sniffing XP

Windows anticipated XP operating system (OS) came out recently, and it's generating a lot of excitement in the video field (see Steve Bress's article on XP in this issue). But, there is another cool feature to the XP OS that should also be very useful to camcorder users, as well--especially those camcorder models with digital-still capability. That's the Autoplay sniffing feature, which allows the computer to go out and detect the types of media that are connected to its various input ports, whether these are USB, IEEE1394, PCMCIA, CD-ROM, etc.

Right now, most camcorders with digital-still capability use either Memory Stick or MultiMediaCard/Secure Digital memory modules. Once any still images are detected (JPEG, TIFF or whatever) by XP, image thumbnails are presented. You then have the option to select specific images or all of them. Next, you name a destination folder, and then click the transfer button to, move the images from your camcorder memory module to the designated folder in your computer. A simple naming convention is used for a group of images, so it …