MiniDV FireWire capture fails on MacBook Pro (High Sierra

You say that you bought an old version of FCP, could that have been version 6 or 7 from Final Cut Studio 2 or 3 respectively?

If so ,then the instalation of FCP 6 or 7 will unlock the PRO features of Quicktime Player 7 and hence no additional license codes are required.

The following link is for the download of QTP 7 from the Apple site.

It says that Sierra or earlier is required but also that it is not compatible with macOS after Mojave so might be worth a try with High Sierra???

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/106391

if you can get QTP 7 PRO to work then capture with File>New Movie Recording.

Please tell us how much RAM is in that MBPro, the capacity of the drive, how much free space is available on it and whether it's a hard drive or an SSD.

From your description, it sounds like a QuickTime problem. If you can see the video in QT, FCP and/or iMovie and begin recording, all your hardware & cables are working fine.

In that case, the problem has to be software and since QuickTime is embedded in the operating system (High Sierra) I agree with Matti Haveri about doing a fresh install of the entire system.

To start from a clean state, I'd backup, download High Sierra installer from Apple and prepare a bootable USB installer from it, boot to it, format the internal disk as MacOS Extended (GUID) and install High Sierra to it.

Then try again to import with Final Cut. Or if that again fails, buy iMovie HD 6 (or iLife '04) and update it to 6.0.3 and try again.

QuickTime Player can also import DV via Firewire but the "new" QT Player imports bad quality because it deinterlaces and produces ghost lines no matter what. The old QT Player Pro 7 is good but the licenses for it are no longer sold.

Apart from the advices then, you can also look for various other freeware or the likes video editors that support mac and see if they work, should the other apps not work out.

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mac freeware video editor - Google

thesurreyfriends wrote:

the instalation of FCP 6 or 7 will unlock the PRO features of Quicktime Player 7 and hence no additional license codes are required.

Thanks for the info!

If the original poster can get QuickTime Player 7 Pro working (it works up to Mojave), it is best to use its "Device Native" preference for DV/D8 import -- the quality is the same lossless as with iMovie v1-6 and Final Cut Pro. Later QuickTime Player versions produce "ghost lines" in moving scenes because they deinterlace when importing (I prefer to do the deinterlace later with Final Cut Pro or ffmpeg in a more controlled manner).

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255940328?answerId=261124961022&sortBy=oldest_first#261124961022

I believe you said that you used the screen capture function in QuickTime Player. Normally it is File>New Movie Recording function that is used in this instance.