Attach the digital camcorder or analog-to-digital converter box to a computer with a Firewire or USB 2 cable. If your computer has both, always choose Firewire over USB 2 when working with video. Most digital Mini-DV or HDV camcorders utilize Firewire connections.
Features ADVC55 - High-quality Analog-to-Digital Video Conversion Use ADVC55 to connect VHS, Hi8 and other analog video equipment to a DV camera, deck or editing system. ADVC55 is a compact and easy to use digital video converter compatible with Windows and Mac OS computers.
ADVC55 is ideal for capturing analog video into FireWire-equipped notebook and desktop editing computers. There are no drivers to install and ADVC55 does not require a power supply when used with a 6-pin DV cable.
Quote: Originally posted by pullathomas: is there one. I know there is all that dazzle stuff for PC, but i would really like doing it in iDVD or Final Cut Pro on my Mac? It needs to be external becuase i am on a powerbook. Anyone have any ideas. Please let me know. Yes - The cheaper ones are USB based.
The more expensive ones are Firewire based. You will get what you pay for in terms of video input/output quality. I've got a firewire analog/digital converter by Canopus that gets the job done. Its about the size of a multidisk cd case so its light and portable.
![Video Video](http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2016/11/vidbox-video-conversion-suite-record-in-progress-100690877-large.jpg)
No software drivers - purely hardware based. There are a variety of models and prices by a number of different manufacturers. You might want to do a feature and price comparison at iGeek or cnet.com. I would note that converters need a huge amount of disk space to input raw digital feeds. Unlike a video card there will not be any jpeg video compression.
(Ideally you want at least 20 gb of free hard disk space.) This obstacle can be mitigated if you also buy an external hard drive. I also wonder what impact a 4200 rpm hard drive will have on the quality of video imported. There may be an issue with dropped frames. On my G4 tower, the video quality can be quite impressive.
One choice is to shrink the video size or quality. I hope that you have a G4 chip in your laptop or access to Altivec machine. You will not need Altivec if you keep the video in DV digital video format; however, it will take a very long time with a G3 laptop if you want to convert your video to a smaller size format such as.mpg1 or.mov. Ah the rewards and pitfalls of video on computer.