How to ingest old DV?

[Jeff Nelson]

Thanks. I heard about an app called LifeFlix which is good for this job. It’s $99, seems a bit overpriced. Need to figure a way to see if my setup can just basically “see” my DVR. Then can play around with different ways to ingest. Think that means experimenting with different adapters…firewire 400 to 800 to thunderbolt 2…to tb 3… So going to see what I can do there first. Thanks again to everyone.

[Jeff Nelson]

I got it working, guys!! I had a firewire 800 adapter on my mac tower, which I guess I used to ingest from a capture card when I ingest cards. I plugged my deck in there – Premiere sees it, and I’m now capturing smoothly!

Don’t know if that adapter would work on my new iMac, but don’t want to tie up the iMac since this is the box I mostly live on, and so the old tower is in the other room, and for the next week or whatever I’ll be going in every hour or so and putting in a new tape. Also have a sh*t ton of old home movies I’m going to put across.

Thanks again.

[Ann Bens]

I am not a mac person, but I

Don’t think you can edit old-fashioned DV footage on Catalina or Big Sur.

32 vs 64 bit?

[Jeff Baker]

Have tried QuickTime or iMovie to ingest? I have the same deck but haven’t used it in a few years. The video window will be very small, so be prepared for that unless you have an old external SD monitor.

[Paul Carlin]

You are going to want to clean the heads in your DV deck often. Those old tapes are shedding, and DV is very intolerant to drop outs. Get some Texwipes and head cleaner and blow the dust out of that VTR. Clean after each tape and let it dry before inserting a new tape.

Also, DV uses an obsolete compression codec no longer supported, so convert those captured movs to ProRes 422HQ if you want to have any hope of using them in the future. Use Topaz Video Enhance AI to convert the interlaced footage to something useable in today’s progressive world.