wtd: advice on video capture via i.link

[Hack5190]

Have an older Sony "Digital Video Camcorder" with an i.link (aka: firewire) port. Since the G5 has firewire built in it seems like a good fit. In addition to the cable software to capture / save the video is needed. So I'm looking for advice / recommendations for software and anything else I may have missed.

 

[Dronecatcher]

Have an older Sony "Digital Video Camcorder" with an i.link (aka: firewire) port. Since the G5 has firewire built in it seems like a good fit. In addition to the cable software to capture / save the video is needed. So I'm looking for advice / recommendations for software and anything else I may have missed.

When I used this approach years ago iMovie did the trick with no trouble.

 

[Hack5190]

When I used this approach years ago iMovie did the trick with no trouble.

Found iMovie on Apple's website and ordered this cable, let's see what happens.

Thanks @Dronecatcher

 

[Dronecatcher]

iMovie/Firewire also gave me remote control of the camera, so seeking to the required clip to edit was easy....seemed amazing back in 2003 on my 700Mhz G4 iMac!

 

[Eriamjh1138@DAN]

I remember dumping 480i and 480p video from my camera to my mac over firewire. We are certainly spoiled with SD cards and straight uploading to YouTube from our phones today.

 

[Hack5190]

I remember dumping 480i and 480p video from my camera to my mac over firewire. We are certainly spoiled with SD cards and straight uploading to YouTube from our phones today.

How true! Browsing through the owners manual (copyright 2002) I forgot that this unit could use the "Sony Memory Stick" - anyone remember those?

 

[Dronecatcher]

How true! Browsing through the owners manual (copyright 2002) I forgot that this unit could use the "Sony Memory Stick" - anyone remember those?

Still have one on active duty in my Sony Clie....

 

[Hack5190]

Sony Clie, this is becoming a trip down the memory lane of old technology.

 

[Eriamjh1138@DAN]

Mine recorded on (gasp) MiniDv TAPE! I had to wait 10 minutes to import a 10 minute video? 1X!

 

[Hack5190]

Update: The eBay cable arrived today and as @Dronecatcher mentioned iMovie provides control over the camcorder.

Now all I need is about 6 months to watch / record all these Hi8 tapes to files.

 

[bobesch]

Update: The eBay cable arrived today and as @Dronecatcher mentioned iMovie provides control over the camcorder.
Now all I need is about 6 months to watch / record all these Hi8 tapes to files.

Good luck!
I'm currently running a similar project to recover old DV-Cam-clips and I have pretty much fear, that our old Panasonic-camcorder might kick the bucket, before all video-tapes have been copied to iMovie.
Back in 1998 I used a special PCI-Video-encoder-card to copy/encode stuff to SVCD-media. What a waste of time, since SVCD is totally obsolete now and quality is horrible ...

Take care: start/stop-maneuvers with the Camcorder produces drop of video-frames, while the audio-stream continues without drops. That might make video/sound become asynchron. You won't get aware of it on the first-version native video-stream copied to the harddrive but the problem will occur after cutting clips for a new video.
I have no experience yet, if this problem also occurs with iMovie and editing DV-video-material.
At that old PC times with "Fast DVD-Master" encoder-card the DV-video from the cam had been captured analog and I had to use "TMPEGenc" and "PV Strumento" to reorganize picture&sound to prevent asynchronizity previous to further editing of any video-clip.

 

[Hack5190]

Take care: start/stop-maneuvers with the Camcorder produces drop of video-frames, while the audio-stream continues without drops. That might make video/sound become asynchron. You won't get aware of it on the first-version native video-stream copied to the harddrive but the problem will occur after cutting clips for a new video..

Thanks for the insight. After doing some testing I decided to simply capture the entire contents of each tape into a single file. That reduces the time needed to get them converted and backed up. When completed I can split each file into clips and export those clips in a format other than DV by using VLC.

Since VLC runs on Windows I can even have my wife work on some of the files

 

[bobesch]

Thanks for the insight. After doing some testing I decided to simply capture the entire contents of each tape into a single file. That reduces the time needed to get them converted and backed up. When completed I can split each file into clips and export those clips in a format other than DV by using VLC.

Since VLC runs on Windows I can even have my wife work on some of the files

I would do some testing previous to exporting the entire clip (which has a lot of start/stop sequences) to another video-format: export a clip which contains a lot a lot of start&stops as one clip e.g. into mpeg or another compressed video-format. Then cut the clip into several parts and put them together as a new video. Then check video-playback: start/pause several time, while viewing that video, jump forward/backwards and finally to a part close to the end, where you should have placed parts with people talking. Watch, if lips/voice are still synchroneous. Thats important, especially if your primary video-source might be analog or you add parts of analog video to a later film.