Mini DV Video Capture Over FireWire

[JonnyAlpha]

Hi,

I started a thread here on transferring video from my Mini DV tape collection.
I am having loads of trouble getting a PCI-e Firewire Card to work, when I decided to take a look at th back of my wife's old 2008 iMac.
Low and behold it has a Firewire 400 and what I believe is a Firewire 800 port on the back (images attached).

This is a 2008 model iMac and is not the fastest beast around, but if it was my only option for capturing and coverting video from my Mini DV tapes what are my options.

The Camcorder is a Panasonic NV-DS60 which has a DV connector on the side, which I believe will connect to a Firewire port on the receiving device.

Questions:

1. What cable / connector on the Mac should I use?
2. What software do I need to do the transfer?
3. Any guides on transferring DV on a Mac?
4. What OS version will work? This one is still running 10.6.8 Snow Leopard.

However I have just had a thought, I do have a newer Macbook Pro (mid 2015) running OS X 10.15.7 Catalina, with 2 x ThunderBolt ports.
Would it be better to use a DV - Firewire cable and a Firewire to Thunderbolt adaptor?

Many thanks in advance for your help.


[Attachment 75291 - Click to enlarge]

[aramkolt]

Yes, I would use the more modern Mac and a firewire to thunderbolt adapter. You can do it like this in iMovie or QuickTime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkKuUVeX5No

One thing the video doesn't note is that you have to choose your audio and video source from the dropdown arrow to the right of the big red record button as well as your audio source and quality you want. Then have to save it at the end.

[Alwyn]

I don't use Macs but I'd give the old machine a test run first before buying adapters. DV is digital; it will either capture/work or it won't. There's no variables involved. Given DV is in the order of 30Mb/sec and the Firewire speed is 400, I can't see why your old machine won't happily capture ("transfer").

[october262]

Hi,

I started a thread here on transferring video from my Mini DV tape collection.
I am having loads of trouble getting a PCI-e Firewire Card to work, when I decided to take a look at th back of my wife's old 2008 iMac.
Low and behold it has a Firewire 400 and what I believe is a Firewire 800 port on the back (images attached).

This is a 2008 model iMac and is not the fastest beast around, but if it was my only option for capturing and coverting video from my Mini DV tapes what are my options.

The Camcorder is a Panasonic NV-DS60 which has a DV connector on the side, which I believe will connect to a Firewire port on the receiving device.

Questions:

1. What cable / connector on the Mac should I use?
2. What software do I need to do the transfer?
3. Any guides on transferring DV on a Mac?
4. What OS version will work? This one is still running 10.6.8 Snow Leopard.

However I have just had a thought, I do have a newer Macbook Pro (mid 2015) running OS X 10.15.7 Catalina, with 2 x ThunderBolt ports.
Would it be better to use a DV - Firewire cable and a Firewire to Thunderbolt adaptor?

Many thanks in advance for your help.


[Attachment 75291 - Click to enlarge]

shows here on how to connect the camera to other devices - https://www.manualslib.com/manual/117315/Panasonic-Nv-Ds60.html?page=37#manual

[Bwaak]

Definitely try the older Mac first with Firewire 400 cable. I used to transfer DV to a 1998 Pentium III 500 MHz Win98 laptop, so yours has more than enough power. Firewire does not need a powerful CPU. I haven't tried capturing on a Mac, but supposedly iMovie should be able to do it.

[Cornucopia]

iMovie, FCP/FCX, and (seeing as how that is an older OS) QuickTime.

But note they save in different ways: IIRC, iMovie saves Raw .DV, FCP/FCX and QT save in type 2 MOV container.

Scott

[Bwaak]

AFAIK, Quicktime saves as 30p.

[Alwyn]

I'd treat anything that Youtuber in post #2 says with a grain of salt. In his Windows DV capture vid, he clearly doesn't know what he's doing: he mentions that "a program that was recommended to him" was HDVSplit but it didn't work; of course it won't because it's for HDV, and then he uses VDub, which drops 34 frames in 490 captured and he doesn't even notice. No mention of any of the proper DV transfer programs WinDV or Scenalyzer.

[Cornucopia]

AFAIK, Quicktime saves as 30p.

No, just like any real DV capture, it saves the incoming stream as-is (which is 99% of the time interlaced).
What Quicktime DOES do is present it deinterlaced, but this is a switchable setting.

Scott

[Cornucopia]

@Alwyn, since the OP was talking about MacOS capture, WinDV & Scenalizer don't really enter into the picture. But I agree about taking that post with a grain of salt.

Scott

[JonnyAlpha]

Yes, I would use the more modern Mac and a firewire to thunderbolt adapter. You can do it like this in iMovie or QuickTime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkKuUVeX5No

One thing the video doesn't note is that you have to choose your audio and video source from the dropdown arrow to the right of the big red record button as well as your audio source and quality you want. Then have to save it at the end.

As I don't have a Firewire to Thunderbolt adaptor and my Firewire DV to Firewire 400 cable turned up today, I decided to give it a go.

I am pretty up to speed so to speak with modern versions of iMovie but have never used iMovie 08, let alone importing anything from DV.

In the guide you linked he mentions checking Apples iMovie Camera compatibility list, my Pansonic NV-DS60 is not listed, so maybe it would only work with an older version of iMovie?

Anyway, with iMovie fired up when I plugged the camera in an import window opened automatically. Took me a while to work out how to import from the camera. I seemed to have to press play on the camera, then pause and then create a New Event?

After importing the tape (about 54 min of recording), it placed all of the recording broken into lots of separate clips into the event area. I then dragged a 4 second clip into the project area as a test. I then clicked the 'Share' menu and selected 'Export Movie. This gives several resolution options, I chose the largest available 960 x 540. This exported the clip as a .m4v file of 2MB.

What is the recommended resolution for Mini DV?

[Bwaak]

After importing the tape (about 54 min of recording), it placed all of the recording broken into lots of separate clips into the event area. I then dragged a 4 second clip into the project area as a test. I then clicked the 'Share' menu and selected 'Export Movie. This gives several resolution options, I chose the largest available 960 x 540. This exported the clip as a .m4v file of 2MB.

What is the recommended resolution for Mini DV?

I don't know how Apple became a platform for video editing with neither FCP or iMovie able to edit clips without re-encoding them first into an intermediate format (at least back then, maybe they have added native editing since?) When AVCHD came out, Apple boasted that its hardware and software was fully up to the job, but it was not, Apple even created a lame iFrame format, 960x540 @ 25p/30p, because it could not handle native AVCHD.

You want 50p for Youtube, or 25i for DVD. If you want to upload to YouTube, you want at least 720 scanlines, with square pixels this would amount to 960x720 (ideally you would slightly crop the sides to make it true 4:3, but this is minor compared to other ways Apple can butcher your video). If iMovie cannot do this, use something else, hopefully the files themselves are proper 720x576 @ 25i.

[JonnyAlpha]

After importing the tape (about 54 min of recording), it placed all of the recording broken into lots of separate clips into the event area. I then dragged a 4 second clip into the project area as a test. I then clicked the 'Share' menu and selected 'Export Movie. This gives several resolution options, I chose the largest available 960 x 540. This exported the clip as a .m4v file of 2MB.

I also found this video useful.

What is the recommended resolution for Mini DV?

I don't know how Apple became a platform for video editing with neither FCP or iMovie able to edit clips without re-encoding them first into an intermediate format (at least back then, maybe they have added native editing since?) When AVCHD came out, Apple boasted that its hardware and software was fully up to the job, but it was not, Apple even created a lame iFrame format, 960x540 @ 25p/30p, because it could not handle native AVCHD.

You want 50p for Youtube, or 25i for DVD. If you want to upload to YouTube, you want at least 720 scanlines, with square pixels this would amount to 960x720 (ideally you would slightly crop the sides to make it true 4:3, but this is minor compared to other ways Apple can butcher your video). If iMovie cannot do this, use something else, hopefully the files themselves are proper 720x576 @ 25i.

I might take a look at Quick Time on this Mac? and research what other apps I could use. Otherwise I move the camera to my shed and use a PC I dug out yesterday and used a Windows capture method mentioned here such as Scenalyzer or WinDV.

I took a look in iMovie Library, but can't seem to expand it?
Anyway in Finder / Movies - all of the imported clips are listed with filenames such as 20;19;50.dv I take it these are the imported DV files?
I wonder what else on this Mac I could encode them into 960 x 720?
Is there anything for a Mac that can interrogate the DV video files to see what resolution they are?