Best Way To Get My DVDs and VHS into iMovie?

[musings22]

I really need advice because I know I am taking three hours to do something that should only take a half hour.

I am trying to get some of my old vhs tapes and dvd footage of my band into iMovie so that I can edit them and give them new life. I have a Macbook Pro.

The tedious way that I am doing it now is: I am recording the DVDs and VHS into my very old Sony DCR-TRV11 CAMCORDER. I then upload the footage to my old ibooks older version of iMovie (since the usb cable will not fit into my new Macbook pro), then I burn it to a disc and put it into my Macbook pro where I edit it in iMovie. Obviously, this is a ridiculous process and there has to be an easier way. I also think that some of the quality is lost by doing it this way.

Can someone please make suggestions on how I can get my DVDs and VHS into iMovie without having to go through all of this??

Thanks!

 

[sirkibble2]

If you can, get a cable that will allow you to capture right into iMovie. I'm not sure if your camera has firewire capabilities but if it does, investing into one will save you time now and later.

 

[musings22]

Is there a way to get my VHS and DVDs into iMovie using something other than a camcorder?

If not, can anyone recommend a good video camera (under $500) that will record my VHS/DVDs in good quality and be compatible with my macbook pro and the latest imovie?

 

[spinnerlys]

1. You can either use a capture card like this to record the VHS (and even DVD) onto your Mac and then export the video for iMovie.

2. You can use the mentioned capture card and also use MacTheRipper and MPEG Streamclip to rip/copy the DVD to your HDD and then convert it to some QuickTime file (.mov) with the Apple DV codec.

3. Your camera doesn't have USB. What you are referring to is called Firewire (i.Link in Sony speak, IEEE 1394 in other products).
Your new MacBook Pro has a Firewire port, it looks like this

so you can use a Firewire cable that goes from 4-pin (your camera, manual here to 9-pin (your Unibody MacBook Pro).

The cable looks like this and costs around 5€.

4. Your iBook has Firewire 400, the current MacBook Pros have Firewire 800. There are cables for that too, so you can either network via Firewire (or even LAN/Ethernet) or you can run the iBook in Target Disk Mode, which lets you acces the iBook's HDD as an external HDD on the MBP.

Firewire 6-pin (iBook) to 9-pin (MBP) cable:

Those are the Firewire ports currently existing:

I hope that clears up some things.

 

[spice weasel]

For non-commercial DVDs, which are in mpeg-2, you need to copy the contents of the DVD (open the DVD and you will see a VIDEO_TS folder with a bunch of .vob, .ifo, and .bup files) and then transcode the video files (the .vob files) inside. Use software such as MPEG Streamclip to transcode these .vob files to DV, which is an editable format. You can then import that into any version of iMovie for editing.

For VHS tapes, you need to use an analog-to-digital converter. You have several choices. If you have a DV camcorder that has analog-to-digital conversion built-in, you can use that. Connect your VCR deck to the camcorder via RCA cables and the camcorder to your Mac via firewire.

If your camcorder does not do analog-to-digital conversion, you can connect your VCR to your camcorder and record your VHS tapes onto a miniDV tape in the camcorder. You can then import the tape into iMovie.

Lastly, you can buy an analog-to-digital breakout box such as those offered by Canopus (or you can use something like Elgato's EyeTV).

The process will take a lot of time. For your tape sources, everything is captured in real time. For your DVDs, it depends on how fast your machine can transcode mpeg-2 to dv.

Good luck.

 

[musings22]

Thanks so much everyone....spinnerlys, your feedback helped a lot!

 

[leedoty]

home dvds to imovie

Cant figure this out and it should be ssssso simple. I just want to edit some old dvds. I did the disk utility routine but imovie aborted midway. Can anyone provide help in extremely simple terms? I would be so grateful!

 

[spinnerlys]

Cant figure this out and it should be ssssso simple. I just want to edit some old dvds. I did the disk utility routine but imovie aborted midway. Can anyone provide help in extremely simple terms? I would be so grateful!

You have to be more specific what you want.
What old DVDs? Are they filled with your home movies, or are those DVD containing produced movies?
What Disk Utility routine?

Have you tried looking through MRoogle to find what you want?