Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2009/03/02
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I had about 40 hours of 8 mm analog video tape to convert to digital format. Most of it was recorded on an older Sony videocam. I solved the problem by buying a Sony digital cassette recorder DV-D800 NTSC at a Sony clearance center. It cost me about $300 new a few years ago but is available on eBay for less than $100. The cassette recorder is a small box about 4" by 6" that mounts a video 8 or Hi 8 tape. It contains a 4" TFT Screen and has the usual VCR controls. The recorder has standard RCA video and audio outputs, S video inputs and outputs. and, most important a digital video output. The procedure for use was very simple. Simply insert an analog video tape and connect the digital video output to your Mac Firewire port. (If you have a new unibody MacBook or MacAir you are out of luck. They don't have Firewire ports.) Using iMovie, the Mac recognizes the recorder as a Sony digital videocam and imports the video data stream. From there on out it is just like using a new digital videocam. You can edit the movie to your heart's content, adding breaks, titles, transitions, special effects, etc. Then export the movie to iDVD to burn the finished disc. You could do much the same thing with a digital 8 videocam. The kind that takes standard analog tapes. Otherwise you would have to find one with a "pass through" facility. Feed the output from the old analog camera to the digital camera.Then pass it through to the Mac. Incidentally, I found iMovie 6 far easier to use than iMovie '08 for this purpose. Larry Z