Video upload from camera to Mac is not working. Do I need a special cable or can I use the one we use camera?

Question

Video upload from camera to Mac is not working. Do I need a special cable or can I use the one we use camera?

Answer 1

You have not provided enough detail.

If it is a miniDV or Digital8 tape based camcorder and you are using trying to use USB to transfer the video, that's not gonna happen. You need to use the firewire400 (IEEE1304a, i.Link - all the same thing) port on your Mac with a 4-pin to 6-pin firewire cable connected to the DV port of the camcorder - USB won't work. USB is used only for transferring the stills off the memory card. Whether DV or HDV, iMovie and FinalCut will import the video from the tape.

If it is a hard drive or flash memory camcorder, you will connect with USB, the camera will mount to the desktop like any other USB mass storage device... after copying the files to your Mac, you need to convert them from MPEG2 with a free download from Apple: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/vi...  DV is easiest.

If the hard drive or flash cam is a high definition one using AVCHD compression, ONLY the most recent iMovie (that was bundled with iLife08) or FinalCut 2 will work. Earlier versions will not recognize AVCHD encoded files.

If it is a DVD camcorder, don't use the camcorder for transfer - If you have a drawer loading DVD drive, put the miniDVD in the DVD drive in your computer and rip the video with Handbrake

http://handbrake.fr/

If the DVD drive is slot loading - NEVER put a miniDVD in a slot loading drive - you can either get a drawer loader (like LaCie makes) or get a Canopus analog/digital bridge and connect the AV from the camcorder to the bridge - and the A/D bridge to the firewire port. Alert: DVD based camcorders provide the WORST possible video for transfer and editing...

If it is some other camcorder, you need to tell us more detail.

Answer 2

if it fits it works. the USB ones always work and theres only a few diffrent variations and wont fit if they are a diffrent type.

so if it fits it will work, if it dosnt it wont.