How to Digitize 8mm from an old Hitachi Camcorder?

[Davis White]

I would be so grateful for help.

I now have a bin of useless cables and gadgets from Amazon. Notrhing seems to work.

One the source side:

Hitachi VM-825LA 8mm video camera. The outputs are some weird square plug socket for a cable that is long gone, and no one sells; and Yellow and white RCA composite out.

On the receiving side:

Macbook Air, with its $%^& Thunderpots, I mean Thunderbolt inputs, which are generally incompatible (USB, HDMI DVI, etc). Or:

An an old Windows machine running windows 10 that might has only usb ports for video in. i don't know if the graphics card is adequate.

One lost expenditure was a small box with a mini SD in it. They didn't tell me it reduced my 8mm to VGA. No other format. That's real blurry.

* Is there a chain of devices that will lead from RCA Composite to some kind of storage medium?

daVinci Resolve won't recognize this camera. If I get it into Mac and iMovie don't I suffer unacceptable loss of resolution after going through the 400/800 firewire converters

Please help! Memories of my first- and only- born are on the line!

[davexnet]

Look at the recent threads in the capture forum.
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/406066-What-is-best-capture-device

For most this kind of USB device works well
https://www.amazon.com/DATA-connection-video-capture-GV-USB2/dp/B00428BF1Y/

This may be Windows only

[nicholasserra]

If it has firewire out then easiest to just buy a firewire card and go that route. WinDV or ScenealyzerLive for transfer.

If not then you're gonna need to go down the rabbit hole of USB capture cards.

Or pick up a Sony D8 cam that can do analog playback and has firewire and use that.