I have a Canon GL2 Mini DVCam and I have a new Mac mini M4 Pro. I have a lot of MiniDV tapes that I would like to transfer to my Mac. Is there a way to do it? and what would be the best program to use to import the video, FCP, Adobe Premiere or another program.
Thank you
Corey
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Mac mini, macOS 15.4
One example of a USB video capture device:
El Gato Support – El Gato Video Capture
I looked at an online manual for the Canon GL2. It appears that your camcorder has a S-Video jack, and that there is also some sort of combined A/V output jack. Page 95 of the user manual describes how to hook the camcorder to a TV or VCR that has a S-Video input terminal. Page 96 shows how to hook the camcorder to a TV or VCR that lacks one.
Apparently there is a STV-250N Stereo Video cable that plugs into the A/V jack on the camcorder, and that brings out signals on three RCA plugs:
Unless you send your tapes out to a commercial service, there are two basic ways to do it.
The ideal way is to import digital video from the camcorder over FireWire (also known as IEEE 1394 and iLink). You have to play back the tapes in real time, but this gets you a copy of the digital video (DV) data stored on the tapes, without any further conversion that might result in quality loss.
Unfortunately, Apple and third-party dock vendors dropped FireWire many years ago. Apple never came out with a proper Thunderbolt 3 to FireWire 800 adapter, and they even discontinued the old Thunderbolt to FireWire 800 one. (That's the one that when daisy-chained with an Apple Thunderbolt 3-to-2 adapter, on one end, and a FireWire 800 to 4-pin FireWire 400 cable on the other, could have let you make a FireWire connection to a camcorder.)
--------
The other way to do it is to get a USB video digitizing device of the type that you would use to import video from an old VHS VCR. You connect that to the analog outputs of the camcorder, and import video into whatever format the software that comes with the device supports.
This involves an extra (DV -> analog video) conversion step in the camcorder, and an (analog video -> digital video) conversion step in the USB digitizer. So you might lose some video quality. But at least you can find the equipment.
Thank you so much. I will try it
How can I transfer MiniDV tapes to my Mac mini M4 Pro?
