Downloading Hi8 video

If you plan to edit the footage, you'll need one of the following:

1. An analog-to-digital converter such as the ADVC110 from Grass Valley.

2. A Digital8 camcorder. Digital8 cameras can playback 8mm and Hi8 tapes and have the needed Firewire connection.

If you don't plan to edit the footage and just want to be able to playback and watch it on your computer, you can use one of the h.264 encoder devices that plug in to a USB port.

-DH

There's a more fundamental challenge. The MacBook does not have a FireWire port, so none of the AV-DV converters is going to be usable.

You could use and Elgato EyeTV250Plus to capture the video from your camcorder (it's USB based, not FireWire). This will be fine for viewing or burning the video to DVD. It's not particularly useful if you want to edit your video, however (due to the format/codec the EyeTV converts video to). But for viewing you will be happy with the quality.

Older MacBooks do have a Firewire port.

-DH

Yes, but he may or may not have one of those models. Once he sees our responses he will be able to verify one way or the other.

If it is holiday footage or whatever, what I do is dub the Hi 8 tape onto a Mini DV camcorder tape. You already have a Hi 8 camera. You can borrow or rent a Mini DV camcorder cheaply. Take the analogue out of the Hi 8 and into the DV. Then you can suck the Mini DV tape in to your Mac using either Firewire or, failing that, USB

If you want a more professional (and expensive) solution, or just can't be bothered to dub hours and hours of tape, then go for the converter.

You can borrow or rent a Mini DV camcorder cheaply

If that's true, then he can simply use the DV camcorder as a converter without having to dub to DV tape since most DV camcorders will pass through an analog signal to their DV outputs if set up properly in the camera's menu.

But by dubbing he'd be able to log & capture using timecode and have a digital backup of the footage.

-DH