HELP!! Getting 8mm tapes ----> to my mac!!!

[nickyj182]

HELP!!! Getting 8MM Tapes ----> To MAC!!!!

Hey!!

I have a bunch of 8mm tapes that I shot on my 8mm camcorder about 5 years ago. I borrowed my friends Sony Digital8 Cam, it has a firewire port. So I figured I could get all of my old footage into iMovie. But the problem is, the tapes will say their playing on the cam, but show nothing on the screen!!! The timecode doesnt come up on the screen either! My friend's 8mm tapes play fine in it, their the same type of tape I have, what can I do to get them to play so I can get these onto my eMac!!!

Nick

 

[Sun Baked]

I would have thought most all the Sony Digital8 camcorders could play back the older analog formats.

 

[dvdh]

From my experience, while digital8's play back Hi8 tapes, they are unable to output a digital signal through the firewire port while doing this. The only work around I found was using a Analog to Digital converter (I used a Pyro A/V Link).

 

[Gokhan]

ayy

right first dls give the man a break

right was your tapes recorded on a original 8mm analouge camcorder ?

if so your mates cam needs to be backwards compatabile with normal 8mm his may work with hi 8 and digital 8 but not standard 8mm

a sony trv-460 is compatabile and converts your anlouge tape to a digital signal for the computer to understand

if the ur tapes are not playing on his cam i am sure this is the problem !

if not you need a analouge to digital convertor box for camcorders here in the uk they are about £80 check it out

 

[nickyj182]

Heres the cam: Sony DCR-TRV250 Digital 8

 

[MacFan25863]

If the digital cam has AV in, use that as a passthrough from your analog cam to the computer.

 

[FF_productions]

yea i have a sony trv-460, its sad, but some digital 8 camcorders CANNOT play back old 8mm tapes, mine does, some don't unfortunately, and yes don't expect to find a timecode in old 8mm tapes when putting them on the computter..

 

[weldon]

I went through this with my 8mm tapes a couple years ago. I called around to a couple camera shops and asked which camcorders they rented. Then I looked up the specs to make sure that it would play the old analog 8mm tapes. I paid about $30 for the day, as I recall, and the camcorder output the video playback over the firewire port so I was able to capture all my old home movies to computer quite effortlessly.

 

[rjphoto]

The TRV-250 DOES NOT support the old tapes. You actually need an older Dgital 8 camera.

I have an old TRV-108 that I used for some time, but recently it started having trouble with play back (it still records so I had to borrow a friends TRV-250 to edit with until I bought a Mini-DV camera.)