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Capture to my iMac - which drive and how?

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Capture to my iMac - which drive and how?

Postby zenhog » Fri Jan 27, 2012 2:46 am

I am setting up my new iMac and am faced with an issue regarding capture.

I have a Cannon HV20 HDV tape camera. I've been capturing to my PC with the firewire400 cable.

Now I look on the back of my iMac and it has a firewire800 port. Well, the firewire400 plug won't fit so I guess I have to find a new cable for the camera - or maybe there is a 400 - to - 800 converter plug?

Also can I capture straight to that drive by cabling directly to it or do I have to plug into the computer? I thought I remember seeing you post something about either capturing to an external, or maybe you said you used a separate capture program.

Thanks for the great site.
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Re: Capture to my iMac - which drive and how?

Postby Steve Grisetti » Fri Jan 27, 2012 7:51 am

No. Every Mac I've seen uses the standard FireWire cable. So I've no idea why your cable doesn't work, zen.

The best way to capture to an external drive on a Mac is to attach the external drive (via USB) to your computer, plug your camcorder's FireWire cable into your computer and then use Premiere Elements to capture the video to this external drive.
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Re: Capture to my iMac - which drive and how?

Postby Bob » Fri Jan 27, 2012 1:58 pm

Apple switched from the Firewire 400 port to the Firewire 800 port and the plug is different. Firewire 800 is backwards compatible with Firewire 400, so you just need to find a way to plug your Firewire 400 device into the Firewire 800 port. You can buy a 400 to 800 adapter or get a 400 to 800 cable. Here are some examples: http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=firewire+400+to+800+adapter
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Re: Capture to my iMac - which drive and how?

Postby Steve Grisetti » Fri Jan 27, 2012 9:29 pm

My one problem with Apple is that they think nothing of adding an innovation that forces you to buy more equipment to deal with it.

I remember, back in 2000 or so, when OSX was first introduced, virtually every piece of software for version 9 was incompatible and had to be replaced. You can imagine how that hit independent designers, who suddenly found that thousands of dollars worth of software was suddenly obsolete!

It was probably the right move all around -- but, ouch, did those growing pains hurt!
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Re: Capture to my iMac - which drive and how?

Postby RichXCastel » Fri Aug 08, 2014 2:42 pm

Apple doesn't support Firewire technology (protocol) any more, thats why newer Macs don't have a firewire port. You can still buy firewire adapters at any Apple store. Apple wants you to use their Thunderbolt port, so now you"ll have to buy adapters for this technology. You can load any analog or older technology to a PC using Firewire then download the file to a thumbnail, then transfer to your Mac. Tech support at Grassvalley.com is aware of this issue. I thought all I needed was a driver for my ADVC-55 to transfer video to my Mac, but like I said Firewire technology doesn't work on Mac's

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Re: Capture to my iMac - which drive and how?

Postby RichXCastel » Fri Aug 08, 2014 2:55 pm

Zen, check out the products offered by ELGATO, or ROXIO. They are now Mac compatible and should let you load any older technology to your Mac, which probably doesn't have a Firewire port anymore.

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Re: Capture to my iMac - which drive and how?

Postby Ron Hunter » Sun Aug 10, 2014 6:54 pm

I had the same problem about a year ago. Had to buy a special cable, one end had the connector for my HV30, the other end had the connector for the iMac (and the connectors were definitely different). Problem solved. I used iMovie to pull in the footage.
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Cameras (in use): Panasonic GH4/Canon HFR400/Canon HV30, GoPro HD Hero2.
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Re: Capture to my iMac - which drive and how?

Postby GerryB » Mon Aug 11, 2014 6:20 am

Like Ron H I have imported from a HV30 to the MAC using a FireWire to Thunderbolt lead. I then edited the video in iMovie, Final Cut Pro trial and Prem El 11.

This was necessary for a project I was working on. I still use Prem Pro on a PC for all main video work.

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