Ripping Old Family Movies to iMac

[this is funah]

i have absolutely no background in this area of transferring videos to computers. i have a stack of older family movies on those little camcorder tapes and i really would like to convert them to DVD for safer backup just incase anything happens to the original tapes. is there anyway i can transfer these movies to my computer without having miniDV?

thanksz

 

[balamw]

is there anyway i can transfer these movies to my computer without having miniDV?

Does your camcorder have a firewire port? If so, you're (probably) all set. Even Digital 8 cameras will generally use DV compression and have a firewire/iLink port which will be compatible with iMovie or iDVD.

If not, and your camera only has analog video out, you will need to use a converter that will either give you firewire out, or a different kind of video capture box that will take the video to MPEG-2 and provide either a USB or firewire data output.

Have a look at the list of supported devices and see what you'll need.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/camcorders.html

B

 

[this is funah]

Does your camcorder have a firewire port? If so, you're (probably) all set. Even Digital 8 cameras will generally use DV compression and have a firewire/iLink port which will be compatible with iMovie or iDVD.

If not, and your camera only has analog video out, you will need to use a converter that will either give you firewire out, or a different kind of video capture box that will take the video to MPEG-2 and provide either a USB or firewire data output.

Have a look at the list of supported devices and see what you'll need.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/camcorders.html

B

thank you so much.

my camcorder is analog out only. so i'll be getting a converter with firewire.

thanks again!!!