[MacDV] newbie needs help moving video from sony dvd403 cmcorder to macbookpro

[Nick Scalise]

---- Ford Albritton <falbrit at yahoo.com> wrote: 
> i am an apple newbie. i bought my macbook pro to start 
> video editting as  a hobby and to speed up my photo editting.
> 
> i cannot seem to find a way to import captured video
> form the sony handycam through usb2 port and while the dvds will
> play through the usb with the camcorder as a the player, there is no way to
> extract the files to a useable imovie format.
> 
> i have tried converting the files to mpeg on my xp
> system using the enclosed sony software which works fine on the pc BUT
> the mpegs will not open with quicktime and when i import them to the mac,
> i also get a non useable media error message.
> 
> if i could only extract the files from the dvd format itself....

You can't extract video from any camera through the Mac's USB port. 

That's what the firewire port is for.

Unfortunately, the whole digi-cam industry is moving to the DVD Cam model and that is the worst direction they could go for home editors. The DVD format is a highly compressed format that you first must uncompress to edit and then compress back again to write back to DVD. This deteriorates quality. (And isn't this ashame as the whole 'digital revolution' was to eliminate going from analog to digital back to digital again - which caused a loss of quality. The more things change the more they stay the same.)

Can your Mac read and play the DVD's that your camera is generating? If so, you should be able to use MPEG StreamClip to convert the files on the DVD to DV files so that you can edit them in iMovie. (Note: MPEG StreamClip is free, however you will need to purchase Apple's QuickTime MPEG2 Component for $20).

http://www.mpeg-streamclip.com
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/

Another way to get the video from your DVD camera to your computer is to play the video on your camera through an Analog to Digital converter like the Canopus ADVC-110. However this adds some expense and just creates an extra step.

Lastly, the best way to edit movies from a DigiCam is to get a camera that writes to DV tape. The compression is much less, the image will stay unaltered until writing to final DVD.

If you are so inclined, you may want to think about Ebay'ing that sony dvd403 and purchasing a DV Camcorder from Sony or others. It may cost you more now, but the time you save later may be worth it.

Good luck,

--
Nick Scalise
nickscalise at cox.net