Mini DV tapes to Apple Mac Studio

Your play deck has a DV port, that’s good.

You now require a four pin IEEE1394 (aka Ilink, FireWire) cable to connect to the JCV device.

The other end of the four pin cable will go to your Mac. Might be a six, nine or USB-C depending on your specific Max. Adapters to get you connected to the Mac are usually required.

Now that the connections are made you require no special software. DV tape output should go straight into FCPro.

FYI: not all FireWire cables are created equal. Make sure it is a fully pinned in/out bi-directional type. If one is cheaper in cost compared to others that usually means it is short of internal cables.

Al

Bottom of the page:

• Final Cut Pro is compatible with most MiniDV tape-based camcorders using DV and HDV formats, which use a FireWire (also known as IEEE 1394 or i.LINK) cable to transfer video. Avoid disconnecting FireWire devices during import to prevent unexpected behavior or unusable imported media. Please note that FireWire hubs are not recommended for devices in use with Final Cut Pro.

Apple silicon does not change this.

Firstly, mini DV is already in digital form and is not analogue.

Are we talking something like VHS or 8mm video tape?

I can’t recall any Apple specific product that would do this.

Analogue video will first require an A/D converter to process the original tape to a digital form.

There are differing ways to do this, some cameras can act as the A/D converter or you can get a dedicated A/D Converting device.

Can you supply more info about the type of analogue vid you are using and the devices you have?

Al

As Alchroma said, the mini DV is digital, and the Firewire port (may be marked as DV out, or DV in/out) can in principle be used with a mac, but a combination of adapters is required.

The following should work, but I cannot offer any guarantees. We are talking about a technology that is quite old.

Firewire cable 4pin --- 9 pin (the 4pin is the plug that goes into the camera DV port; the 9 pin is usually referred to as Firewire 800

Firewire - Thunderbolt 2 adapter

Thunderbolt 2 - Thunderbolt 3 adapter

This combination, as I said, should still work. Several people have reported success. Being an M1 mac should not impede it, but I have no direct experience (have not used Firewire in a looooong time).

Also, these adapters are expensive, so if you have an older mac around, it may be worth using it to transfer from camera, then copy the files over.

I just posted reply to another discussion but it seems useful here, too...

Check Amazon for ClearClick products. I recently bought the "Video to Digital Converter 3.0 (Third Generation)" model ($200) but if you don't want the bigger screen or any screen you can spend less. It's super-simple and you can use it to review tapes and even view the USB files or output HDMI to a TV without getting a computer involved.

I've painlessly digitized about twenty VHS tapes so far and expect to use it for 8mm, Hi-8, Digital-8, and Mini-DV tapes, presuming my camcorders still work okay. It converts from RCA or S-Video to mp4 files on USB stick or chip at about 2GB per hour. (I have enough gear and connectors here that I could probably connect the digital outputs from my digital cameras but I've heard there are difficulties with capturing their digital video on the latest versions of MacOS.) Given my lack of concern about viewing the old tapes so far, I expect the RCA->USB conversions' quality to be just fine.

User notes: I did set it to capture 640x480 to preserve the 4:3 aspect ratio. Final Cut will expect your Project to be 720p and you can ignore any gripes about the mp4 being non-standard. Of course the output has black bars at the sides and it's easy to share with family and friends on YouTube and elsewhere.

In addition to all the good advice already offered: if you want to import a tape as one long clip, consider importing using Quicktime Player first, and then bringing the resulting file to FCP.

When importing directly, FCP will make a new clip at each break in timecode, thus a one-hour tape may end up in dozens of short clips in FCP. Maybe that is what you want, but if not, import via Quicktime Player "New Movie Recording".

Can you show us exactly the cables and adapters you used?

Also, very importantly: is the camera turned on and in playback mode (or VTR mode or whatever it may be called)?

Hold down the Option key and from the Apple menu choose System Information.

Check what appears under Thunderbolt, and also under Firewire.

No software could recognize the camera under any circumstances I could create suggesting the list of compatible cameras is correct.

The list of compatible cameras is vastly incomplete. As I think Tom already said, if it is a DV camera, it is compatible, basically.

What articles? DV and HDV work with FCP. The information appears at the bottom of the supported cameras page. Intel or Apple silicon makes no difference.