Firewire Input?

[peterguitar]

I seem to remember that I was able to connect either my Sony Digital8 camcorder or my Sony HDV/MiniDV camcorder via firewire to my mac and I was able to capture video directly into Toast this way.

 

EASY-VHS-TO-DVD is useless. Just a pain to get working and not worth the effort when I see the transferred video quality.

 

I wont be able to test this in Toast11 for about a week but I remember I was able to do this before.

So I'm thinking I can punt and do the transfer using my digital camcorder and Toast. Has anyone tried this yet in Toast11?

 

Thanks,

Pete D.

[tsantee]

Toast 11 continues to have the Plug & Burn feature where it can import directly from a DV camcorder. I don't know if it will work with Digital8. If you are running Snow Leopard it also may work to import directly using the new QuickTime. Easy VHS to DVD for Mac is for encoding MPEG 2 video from analog video sources. It isn't a good choice when the video is already digital.

 

I haven't tested plug & burn in Toast 11. It is described in Toast 11 Help as a feature so I'm presuming it works as it did in the past several versions of Toast.

[peterguitar]

Thanks tsantee,

 

The way I'm going to transfer the video is this way: I'm going to pass the analog signal from a VHS player into the camcorder and use the conversion capabilities of the camcorder to create a DV signal that I will send to the Mac over Firewire. I have a Digital8 camcorder and a MiniDV/HDV camcorder that allow for this. My VCR to DVD combo burner has died and I don't want to spend more money on another one of those decks if I can get around this issue using the equipment I have on hand. Thanks for the response because it looks like I should at least try it this way and hope that Toast 11 does not have some kind of quirk where it won't let this happen. The compression in VHS-to-DVD was just unacceptable to me.

 

Thanks!

 

Pete D.

[tsantee]

Thanks tsantee,

 

The way I'm going to transfer the video is this way: I'm going to pass the analog signal from a VHS player into the camcorder and use the conversion capabilities of the camcorder to create a DV signal that I will send to the Mac over Firewire. I have a Digital8 camcorder and a MiniDV/HDV camcorder that allow for this. My VCR to DVD combo burner has died and I don't want to spend more money on another one of those decks if I can get around this issue using the equipment I have on hand. Thanks for the response because it looks like I should at least try it this way and hope that Toast 11 does not have some kind of quirk where it won't let this happen. The compression in VHS-to-DVD was just unacceptable to me.

 

Thanks!

 

Pete D.

I don't know if the DV passthrough will work with Toast. You may have to capture using Vidi (or maybe QuickTime). Then add the DV video to Toast. I believe Toast will only capture from the DV camcorder if the video is on tape and not as a streaming passthrough. Your approach is a good one, however.