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Gear / Technical Help => Photo / Video Recording => Topic started by: firmdragon on November 30, 2017, 03:48:20 PM

Title: Transferring old mini-dv tapes to mac
Post by: firmdragon on November 30, 2017, 03:48:20 PM

Hey guys, Ive been out of the game for a while.  Recently found some time and want to back up some old tape media lying around.  I think i normally did this with virtualdvhs back in the day.  Now I think Ive settled on iMovie and it's saving as .dv files.  Is that the highest quality I can get or can I do better?  Looking for free/lightweight (i'm doing this on a 2k9 mac  :) ) solutions for mac if it's not. TIA!

Title: Re: Transferring old mini-dv tapes to mac
Post by: rippleish20 on November 30, 2017, 04:34:44 PM

I only had a couple but I connected a handheld mini-DV recorder via firewire and used iMovie to import.  There is a program which theoretically simplifies the process-

https://www.lifeflix.com

Title: Re: Transferring old mini-dv tapes to mac
Post by: willndmb on December 01, 2017, 09:36:39 AM

I have done it like mentioned above as well.
Camcorder > iMovie via FireWire, both 400 and 800
It will capture in .dv at 2 go for every 10 minutes.
Depending on your iMovie, you may be able to select 4:3 or 16:9 to match the source. At one point though I believe they 16:9 wasn't an option

If your Mac doesn't have fw you may be able to do USB with a in between device.