Hello Doc O
Jim had some good advice there about the external hardware. I have been using an older version (PCIe internal) of this
Black Magic Intensity video cap card. It plays nice with every edit software I use. That is open your video editing software & set it up for video cap device & audio cap device (if different) & there ya go. And perhaps you can capture with VLC as Jim said. It would be more direct to just capture in vid editing software if you actually want to any editing. You know, cut out those 5 mins of video of your feet while ordering at McDonalds.
In the days of SD there was a company called Canopus that had an outboard video/audio hardware that encoded to MPG2 & AC-3 in real time & then some bonus software to make a DVD with menu, etc. I don't think there is anything that simple for HD, but I would like to wrong. Today it seems it's capture, edit,author, burn.
I might also suggest looking into
M-Disc as discussed elsewhere on the forum. It takes a special burner & the discs cost a little bit more but I think it's the best way to archive precious family memories.
Edit: BTW camcorders frequently come with their video capture software/edit/make disc software. How about yours?