Transferring video to digital

I have hours of video footage in HI8 format that i'd like to transfer to digital to edit and eventually burn to DVD. I'm aware there are companies that provide this service but I have 15 to 20 tapes worth and I wont be using it all. Is there a way of transferring to my mac (G4 AV running OS X 10.4.4), or is it posible to conect my old camcorder to a digital camcorder and rerecord al my tapes?

Hi there,

I haven't got my DV camcorder at home at the minute, I'll get it tomorrow, I can't remember what connections it has on it. You would need video and audio in.

I have a 'Hollywood Dazzle' (don't think you can get them any more), this allows me to convert Analogue video to DV...plug in the old videorecorder/camcorder in one end then firewire out to Mac.

There are other products such as Studio DV, Directors Cut 2. The Directors Cut looks the best.

regards

Ric

Hi there,

I've had a look, and my camcorder (Canon MVX2i) has an AV IN/OUT, svideo IN/OUT, Firewire IN/OUT and a Mic in socket, so in theory you could plug in an old Camcorder stright into it and record directly onto it, then transfer the video via Firewire to the Mac...

So depending on what you have you could do it that way !

Regards

Ric

There are number of analog to digital (A2D) converters out there, and I have used them with zero problems. You still need some kind of video editing software on the computer side; I have always used iMovie. (I like free.) You should also get yourself a huge external drive and be sure that you have firewire connectors on everything; your A2D unit, your computer, and your hard drive all need to communicate via firewire. (Or perhaps USB 2.0, it is supposed to be the wave of the future.)

The last time I did this, iMovie would automatically clip the converted chunks into roughly 10 minute blocks, which was not a problem at all. You can estimate about 1 MB per minute of video when transferring it in this fashion.

Good luck,

CAS

Thanks for your help. Ithinks this is the route I shall start with before buying any other hardwarwe.

dd.

Thank you Cas, this has been very helpful.

dd

No problem !

let us know how you get on...

regards

Ric