Hi! I may have jumped the gun too soon on a TRV 740 on eBay. I wanted to move to D8 from an older defunct analog video camera so it seemed to be the right choice, esp to move my old 8mm tapes to DV. But once the camcorder arrived and I started playing around with it and my G4, there didn't seem to be any way to stream into iMovie. Am I doing something wrong? Is there anyone out there with Mac experience and experience with teh 740? Should I return this (or sell) and buy the 350?

steve

I don't know if there are any Mac users here or not? But you used one word that scares me a little. You don't want to "stream" your old videos anywhere if you want to retain some quality. Streaming is for getting low quality video on to the Internet using the USB port on the 740. None of my D8 camcorders have the streaming video feature so I don't know just how it works? But you should be using the firewire port for moving your DV to your Mac. Forget about using streaming for that purpose. I think the 740 should do everything the 350 will?

Dave

Dave,
You're absolutely right. My ignorance, I'm afraid. My fear here is that the manual for the 740 does not talk about Firewire and the Mac, only about how it works with PCs. And, of course, the 740 doesn't come with the necessary Firewire cables (looks like I'll need a 4 pin to 6 pin cable, which I've ordered from Outpost). So, I guess I'll just have to be patient and wait to see whether this will work. I've asked around a little and the general opinion is that, once connected by Firewire, I'll be able to use iMovie just as I've seen it work with other cameras. Wish me luck!

Thanks for your advice.

steve

It should work fine. The firewire interface should be the same on both the PC and Mac computers. Sony uses the name I-link because Apple holds the copyright on the name firewire. So any place in your manual that talks about I-link, they are talking about firewire.

Dave

It works perfectly, just like when I borrowed my friend's mini-DV. iMovie recognizes the camera and imports both analog and digital footage. I am totally psyched. Thanks for your help and advice.

steve

Hi dustbucket!

You and I are on parallel tracks: just getting into an eBay D8 having used Hi8 for some time. I read with interest your adventure of not being able to download. Glad it all works now.

I downloaded JUST PART of an old 2-hour Hi8 family tape last night, in real time of course, and spent the rest of the evening realizing that editing---getting rid of the junk the kids put on there, messing around with the zoom etc.---is going to take major time and attention. It was okay when sitting quietly in a stored Hi8 tape, but it's not okay to put it all on a DVD!

One very supportive senior member recommended editing it to your satisfaction, and then saving back to videotape, as well as making any DVDs or SVCDs you want. The saved version on tape will be digital (unlike the original) and will contain all the original video information. Any disks will require some compression, which means loss of information. What do you think about that?

Keether,

Yes, we are on the same track. I haven't jumped in right away because I'm aware of just how much space I'll need. I'm looking into buying a 200 GB or more external hard drive (Firewire, of course). You have any thoughts on that?

As far as saving them to tape first, I absolutely agree with that. The ultimate goal for me will be to burn DVDs of these but, as a first step, it makes sense. I'm not sure I understand how buring a DVD of your movie will mean loss of quality. Maybe I just don't know enough yet . . .

I'd love to hear how your projects are going, just to have a buddy in the same boat. What are all your specs? I have a Mac G4 350 Mhz, using 9.2.2 and iMovie 2 (afraid to plunge into OS X, but hearing that you need X to use drives over 137 GB); my camera is a Sony TRV740 and, now that I know I can transfer everything over to my Mac, I'm quite happy with it.

sps

Hi again, dustbucket!

It's beginning to sink into my dense brain: DVDs aren't the perfect thing I used to think. To put all that video information onto a DVD, your machine has to "condense" (read: lose some info) the file. Otherwise it wouldn't fit.

AND YET with all that, DVD shows on the TV screen as the ultimate sharp, clear medium. So who cares about loss of information?

Well...as long as you CAN keep all the original information intact with only the sacrifice of some Hi8 tape (which can't be reused now because it's being used for storage), you might as well.

If you "copy" a DVD, it will be identical to the original (no loss of information). But no DVD will have all the information that the original digital record on tape has.

That is how I understand things at this point.

We'll be downloading to a newish P4 and editing on it. I don't remember all the specs. We'll burn the DVDs on another machine (AMD Athlon 1.3Ghz) simply because it was easier to install the burner there. The two machines are linked in a home network. The second machine has two 120GB hard drives recently installed because of the Western Digital $78 sale. I'll be honest---I haven't gone through the entire process yet. But I've done all but a final burn, just to test, and it seemed to work fine. I was most worried that the network would fink out on me.

Do keep posting!

It stands to reason that for one hour of DV data uncompressed you need 13 Gig's per hour on the drive the DVD holds only 4.7GiG, so obviously it needs compression. You are saying that DVD is sharp compared to what? VHS, yes. But did you see HD as compared to DVD, another step in the right direction. And there are other things on the horizon in the works. Yes, the original data is the best you have and when you digitize it from an Hi8 signal (original) it is almost as good as the original. Almost, meaning there is a minute loss during change from analog to digital . Original analog contains more info as digitizing is making from a straight line discrete steps as example. But analog is noise prone while the digital version is immune to noise. If it is valuable info for you then store it in a digital fashion for editing , or different CODEC(condense or Coding/decoding) applications you will need in the future.(DVD uses MPEG2 CODEC)
Regarding hard drive space on the computer just keep in mind how much you like to store on the drive .13 GIG /hour of raw data + editing info . Figure that keeping all video on hard drives is not pracrical, more you store slower it will run , better to keep edited stuff back to a tape. More convinient and does not need much room. When needed you load it back to the drive. Best is when starting a project is to format a dedicated drive just for the project, keeping things clean and not confused.

To Dave C (and others):

Dave, you said:

"Sony uses the name I-link because Apple holds the copyright on the name firewire."

I have a little more information on that. First, Apple came up with the IEEE 1394 standard and called it Firewire and charged a license fee for others to use the Firewire name. Instead of paying the license fee, Sony decided to use the name iLink and just about everyone else went with 1394. Eventually, like earlier this year, Apple wised up and dropped the license fee for the Firewire name so others could freely adopt it without owing Apple anything. Since Apple had standardized it (thru the IEEE - the International Electronics and Engineering something or other) the use of the ports wasn't restricted to only Apple's use, but as the originator of the standard Apple could control the use of the Firewire name.

I hope this helps.

Steve

Thanks for clarifying things Steve. I wasn't aware that Apple had dropped the license fee requirement. I doubt that Sony will ever go back to using the firewire name because they have invested so much in the I-link name.

Dave

You're welcome, Dave.

Yeah, I doubt that too. I think I remember seeing a blurb on a Mac news website where Sony put out a PR notice or one of their folks was asked about the Apple decision to drop the license fee, and Sony said just that - that they were happy with their investment in the iLink name.

Good thing that the different names didn't turn folks off to the standard - it works so well for DV.

Later,

Steve