I have an old camcorder which has a bunch of football tapes my dad taped of me. I was wondering if anyone has any idea how i am able to upload them onto my mac, the only cable that the camera uses is the audio/video red, white cord. Im not exactly sure what kind of tapes they are, but they were the generation right before the DV tapes i believe .. maybe ntsc?? Any help would be appreciated, being as i need to edit a lot of it and get it onto a dvd for colleges. Thanks !!
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Getting Old Tapes onto iMac
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They are probably Hi8 tapes. The best way to get them onto your mac would be to take the cam to a store and see if they sell a firewire cable that connects to your Hi8 camera. Then you can digitize them using imovie or whatever editing software you have.
There are many many ways to do this.. here are a few
These first few ideas may require a little tweaking to fit your needs
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/252295/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/240099/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/229098/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/251247/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/247789/
(^yes they are diff. links, i thought they were all the same till i looked at the numbers
)
Hope those threads help
Oh and NTSC is what most cameras and video feeds in the US use, as well as some other places. PAL is the other format and is more widely used in Europe, not much to do there with importing. Just a fun fact
Welcome to MR!
These first few ideas may require a little tweaking to fit your needs
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/252295/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/240099/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/229098/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/251247/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/247789/
(^yes they are diff. links, i thought they were all the same till i looked at the numbers
)Hope those threads help
Oh and NTSC is what most cameras and video feeds in the US use, as well as some other places. PAL is the other format and is more widely used in Europe, not much to do there with importing. Just a fun fact
Welcome to MR!
I have a similar, but different interest, this Christmas.
My uncle has lots of old Betamax tapes, and after his Beta player gave up the ghost, we managed to get a 2nd hand one from eBay. However, I'd like to convert those tapes to DVD, but I couldn't get any luck connecting it up to our Panasonic DVD-R unit, so I'm wondering if the Mac is the right way to go about it. The Beta player only has coaxial as an output (no SCART). Any suggestions as to an inexpensive way to do this?
Thanks in advance.
My uncle has lots of old Betamax tapes, and after his Beta player gave up the ghost, we managed to get a 2nd hand one from eBay. However, I'd like to convert those tapes to DVD, but I couldn't get any luck connecting it up to our Panasonic DVD-R unit, so I'm wondering if the Mac is the right way to go about it. The Beta player only has coaxial as an output (no SCART). Any suggestions as to an inexpensive way to do this?
Thanks in advance.
If you own a mini DV camera. It will have a "pass threw" feature. Connect the video and audio cables fromt eh old camera to the mini DV camera then use a firewire cable from the DV camera to the Mac. I went a step further and actually dubbed the old VHS and 8mm tapes to mini DV format. There was no noticeable loss of quality. Now that all my stuff is in DV format with time code applied, import and editing simple. Even a cheap used Sony camera wil be good enough to do the dub and download. For this purpose you don't care about the size of the CCD or how good the lens is.
It's best to get the material off those tapes before it becomes real hard to find a working 8mm tape deck.
Transfer to mini DV format using a mini DV camera. Then import to the Mac using firewire. Edit the material and burn using iDVD. You will need a DV camera but these are cheap. Look for a used Sony TRV33 or the like
Thanks. We have an old-ish Sony DV camera with firewire.
What connection should I make to the camera from the coaxial on the beta player?
You have to find the best common video cable type between the old and new camera. For example I just found an old VHS tape I want to dub to mini DV. So I happen to have a VHS machine that has an S-Video output and my TRS33 Sony camera has S-Video input so I will use that. Both devices also have a composite video but S-Video is better, so I use that. My 8mm video camera had only composite out so I used that to transfer some 8mm analog tapes to DV.
You say your beta player has "co axial" output. What is that? An RCA composite video out? If so then with the right cable it should be able to feed into any DV camera's video input.
Converting NTSC to digital video
With my wife's large collection of old VHS tapes and a desire to switch to DVD only, I used iMovie and iDVD with a DAC 100 converter box. It works. The conversion from iMovie to iDVD is an "overnight" project--I put in the blank DVD and the compression begins, ending hours later with writing the DVD image to my hard disk and then to the blank DVD.
The DAC 100 works smoothly with yellow video, red& white audio into the box and a FireWire output.
With my wife's large collection of old VHS tapes and a desire to switch to DVD only, I used iMovie and iDVD with a DAC 100 converter box. It works. The conversion from iMovie to iDVD is an "overnight" project--I put in the blank DVD and the compression begins, ending hours later with writing the DVD image to my hard disk and then to the blank DVD.
The DAC 100 works smoothly with yellow video, red& white audio into the box and a FireWire output.
I just bought an Elgato EyeTV 250 ( I don't have a camcorder) and have begun the process of converting all old VHS tapes onto my mac (and eventually onto DVD). This works very well and I recommend it.
I should have also mentioned that the converted VHS looks better with the DVD via iMovie/iDVD to the DVD player. I don't quite understand this, it never works that way with cameras and repeat film, prints,etc., there is always progressive degradation. This seems to be a distinct exception, perhaps there is some sharpening that occurs during the compression work on the Mac.
Sometimes this has to do with the type of filtering the software will do when importing the media. Bright flecks of light, speckles, and other errors may be ignored by the encoding software, and or filtered out for quality reasons.
I find that when I encode Audio tapes from cassette into Garageband, the quality has a tendency to go up. The other nice feature comes from Audio Units filter effects that I also enable and use.