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CP450

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 28, 2007
26
0
I'm ready to tackle a project that I have been ignoring for several years and need some help. I have dozens of hours of video (vacations and WWII veteran interviews) on SD cards, Mini DV, and old VCR tapes, that has never been transferred or edited. The most critical to me is the content on the hard drive of my HFS10. It is full of interviews with American, British, and French D-Day veterans taken during a trip to Normandy for the 65th Anniversary of the battle. I really fear its loss if I don't do this right.

I'll be upgrading my Core 2 Duo iMac to a Quad Core i7 iMac with 16GB of RAM very soon. Unfortunately, the more I try to educate myself on how to do the transfer and editing, the more confused I become about the process.

I was wondering if someone would be willing to walk me through the process of transferring this video from its source to my iMac (without loss of quality), how to edit and archive it, and how to finalize it for playback on the iMac, Apple TV, iPhone, and iPad. Perhaps there is a great reference book on the topic that someone could recommend?

The only software that I currently have is iMovie and I have never used it. I'm happy to spend some money on hardware and software to do this right, so all suggestions, from budget to extravagant, are welcome. I would greatly appreciate any guidance. Thanks very much.
 

martinX

macrumors 6502a
Aug 11, 2009
928
162
Australia
I can help a bit. Plug the power cord into the Canon. Plug the mini USB into the Canon and full size USB into your Mac. Start iMovie. Turn the Canon on. Select playback mode on the Canon. Wait (things may take a while).

I'll take a look tonight and get back to you with more details.
 

CP450

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 28, 2007
26
0
Thanks very much. I was afraid to do anything at all in the event that I would accidentally delete my data.
 

alph45

macrumors member
Jun 2, 2010
87
0
the process of importing differs for your various formats.

for your flash formats, plug in your camera, your content should mount like an external drive. Drag and drop to where your archiving, ie create a folder and put stuff there, organized how you like. copying the files over will not erase them on the source.

Importing DV tape is covered in the previous post.

VHS has to be digitized first. Then imported from digital master.

make a copy of the copy. Once it's on your computer your footage isn't safe, it's just on your computer. Use an external HD, back-up your material and store it in a separate location from your computer.

if you have a lot of footage you'll probably need an external drive for scratch anyways when editing. In that case, you need two external drives, one for scratch and one for archive.
 
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