Apple Mini DVI to Video adapter question

[sharifi14]

Hi there,

I would like to import my old home movies on VCR to my iMac (Intel). My VCR has a composite connection, is this the cable I need:
Apple Mini DVI to Video Adapter?

I look forward to hearing from somebody soon! Many thanks,

Alex

 

[kornyboy]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5C1 Safari/525.20)

That connector will not do what you are wanting to do. It is for taking images from your computer and putting them on a TV or projector. What you need is something for capturing video such as an eyetv (by Elgato). Hope this helps.

 

[sharifi14]

I see, thanks for your advice. EyeTV is costly for what I want to do. Is this the cheapest/only way I am able to transfer my home movies to my iMac?

 

[mpshay]

There might be a cheaper way. Do you have access to a camcorder with a firewire output jack? Many of them have pass through video jacks that you could connect your VCR to. Then youse the firewire to get the video onto your Mac

 

[sickmacdoc]

A lot of times it is more cost efficient to have a professional service do the transfer for you, unless of course you have boxes and boxes of them to do.

Digmypics is one such service that has gotten really good recommendations- and not only from me! I have had several hundred slides scanned and can't say enough about their professional and I think reasonably priced services. They recently came back from a devastating fire with all new equipment and can do a great job and you can check out their VHS transfers at http://digmypics.com/VideoTapeTransfer.aspx

I have only transferred a few VHS tapes but I am fortunate to have one of the camcorders like mpshay described- but if I did not I would sure be sending them to digmypics.

 

[sharifi14]

There might be a cheaper way. Do you have access to a camcorder with a firewire output jack? Many of them have pass through video jacks that you could connect your VCR to. Then youse the firewire to get the video onto your Mac

I see what you're saying - thanks for the suggestion. However, the camcorder that I have is about 10 years old, so there aren't any USB or Firewire connections, just bog-standard video-out composite connections.

Digmypics is one such service that has gotten really good recommendations- and not only from me! I have had several hundred slides scanned and can't say enough about their professional and I think reasonably priced services. They recently came back from a devastating fire with all new equipment and can do a great job and you can check out their VHS transfers at http://digmypics.com/VideoTapeTransfer.aspx.

I would consider using a service like this, but I am in the UK so cannot use Digmypics. I'm sure there are others in the UK, but I think or that kind of money I might as well buy an eyeTV.

If anyone else has any suggestions, please do let me know!

 

[Dimwhit]

The only other thing I can suggest is to get a DV Bridge. But they run between $100-200US. I've used one to transfer VCR to my computer, and I also use it to pull video from my TV/DVR.

Unfortunately, there aren't too many options. As far as I know, just the three mentioned:

pass-through camcorder
DV Bridge
service like Digmypics