Transferring footage from camera to computer

In our most recent lesson we were shown how to transfer footage from our cameras to our computers in order to edit them. 

There are two processes: one for a camera that records onto a tape and one for digital camera. For a camera that uses a tape we first made sure that our tapes were wound right to the beginning before plugging it in to the computer, this is so that it doesn't transfer only parts of the footage. We then plugged it into the computer and had to record from the camera. when transferring from a tape, the footage comes out as one long clip whereas a digital camera separates every shot into separate clips to make it easier to find what you are looking for. when uploading from a digital camera all you do is turn the camera on, plug it in and copy the slips across. We used a software called Serif to edit our footage so that we only had the bits that we wanted and could then put them into order using the timeline.