Connecting a JVC GR-240 Mini DV camcorder to iMac

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Connecting a JVC GR-240 Mini DV camcorder to iMac

Hello,

I am completely new Mac user, having used recently decided to ditch my home Dell Pc in favour of a Mac. I have tried to connect my JVC GR-D240 mini DV camcorder to the iMac via the firewire port. Neither iMovie HD (which I downloaded) or iMovie08 seem to recognise the camera – the only source they allow is the build in iSight camera. The camcorder is placed in play mode, but nothing happens.

I can connect the camera to my old Dell PC, record to avi and then copy this to the Mac, but this is not an ideal solution as I am getting rid of the PC soon.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

PS – I have one of the new silver iMacs.

New iMac Silver, Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Posted on Oct 11, 2007 12:48 AM

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Answer 1

hauerdie

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80 points

Oct 11, 2007 1:48 AM in response to Philip M

Hi Philip,

connect the cam, switch it on and start the System Profiler (About this Mac menu).
Look into Hardware/Firewire, there you will see the firewire bus and your cam should be shown.
If this is not the case, then there might be something wrong with your installation or your mac.

You could also download the Firewire SDK from http://developer.apple.com/sdk/
There you will find the AVCBrowser in the applications folder of the SDK. I don't know but it might be possible that you also have to install xcode, which you will find on your DVDs shipped with the mac. Connect the cam, start AVCBrowser and you cam should be shown. In the Browser you can check a lot of thinks on the cam.

I had only one problem with a Sony with dead fw-port, but as yours still works with the Dell it seems to be somethink on the mac side.

Try repair permissons and have a look into /var/log/system.log, if you find anything about firewire there post it.

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Answer 2

Philip M Author

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Oct 13, 2007 4:20 PM in response to hauerdie

I can connect a Western Digital My Book to the Firewire (400) port without problem, yet the JVC still fails to get a response from the Mac. Any ideas? Will a repair permissions help? If yes, how do I do it?

Thanks.

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Answer 3

Philip M Author

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Oct 23, 2007 11:35 PM in response to Philip M

Changing the firwire cable for a new one solved this problem. I am still confused however, as the cable works fine on the PC.

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