Capturing Hi8 video on my iMac

Get an Elgato EyeTV and plug your camera and Mac into that. It lets you record stuff played by the camcorder as if it were a TV signal.

Or you can go to Costco and have them transfer it to DVD ($20 - 2 hours) if your limited in time.

Doing it yourself certainly can be more fun.

phnx911 said:

I have an intel based Mac that I bought about a year ago. My camcorder is probably going on ten years old. It is a Sony model-ccd-trv68, the link to it is here...

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I have a very similar, if not exactly the same camera. (It's a Sony Hi8 "digital" camera anyway.)

I just plug mine in using firewire and it's recognised by iMovie instantly. Perhaps yours is USB, but it should be the same anyway. In my experience, there are no cards, plugs, or anything that needs to be used with this or any other camera on a Mac. The camera has to be on "VCR" mode instead of "taking video" mode of course.

Even with an old analogue Camcorder, all you need is the hardware connector to turn the analogue signal into a digital output (usually firewire again) and you can plug it right into the iMac and run iMovie with no problems.

The only thing you loose when using a non-compatible camera with iMovie is the ability to control the camera through software. However if you hit the physical "run" button on the camera, the video should show up in the capture frame in iMovie. Then clicking the "import" button should work as usual.

If none of this works for you, it might just be a broken camera.

He probably just has regular HI8. There is analog Hi8 and Digital Hi8. The analog doesn't have FireWire, only the coaxial cables. I never knew about Costco. I'm going to have to try that out if I can find one around here. I've got a lot of analog Hi8 tapes I'd like to get on DVD.

Also, are there any of these cheap hardware connecters? I don't have a Hi8 camera anymore, but I'm sure someone I know does and that might be a better route.

maxrobertson said:

I never knew about Costco. I'm going to have to try that out if I can find one around here. I've got a lot of analog Hi8 tapes I'd like to get on DVD.

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My mother just told me about it the other day. She has some old family Hi8 and VCR tapes she wants transfered to DVD.