How do I connect a BELKIN 800/400 Firewire to Thunderbolt 4 port on a 2023 MAC Studio?

Since you are running Tahoe – and Tahoe does not support Firewire – you won't be able to import digital video from that Sony DCR-HC32 MiniDV camcorder.

There are USB video capture devices (with accompanying software) which can take analog audio and video signals from a VCR or a camcorder, and digitize them (usually in MP4 form, rather than in DV form) for use on a computer. If you can live with importing analog video (extra digital-to-analog-to-digital conversion), this could give you a way to import video from your MiniDV tapes to your Mac despite Tahoe's lack of Firewire support.

Whille Firewire (IEEE 1394, iLink) is the preferred video output for a MiniDV camcorder, most camcorders also have analog outputs. They might come with a special cable that plugs into an AV jack on the back and brings out:

• Composite video on a RCA connector (usually color-coded yellow) or S-Video on a S-Video connector.
• Audio on one RCA connector (mono) or on two RCA connectors (stereo)

Other possibilities are borrowing or buying an old Mac or a PC with a Firewire card just to do video transfers, paying a video shop to do the transfers, or finding a standalone DVD recorder with a Firewire input. (These existed on the market briefly, although I haven't seen any in stores for years.)

Adapt it to Thunderbolt 1/2 and then Thunderbolt 3/4/5. Note that if the Mac Studio is on Tahoe or newer, it won't see anything connected to the adapter.

(264274)

As pointed out by @Niel macOS 26 Tahoe completely removed support for Firewire. If you are running macOS 26 on your Mac Studio you will not be able to connect that Firewire device under any circumstances no matter how many adapters you use.

So what version of macOS are you running?

gerryfrommahopac wrote:

Tahoe 26.5.1 unfortunately.

And unfortunately you are not alone. I have several Firewire HDDs but luckily they also have USB ports. There has been a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth over this. However Apple did announce this was going to happen.

lkrupp wrote:

There has been a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth over this.

I think some of the people who have been hit the worst by this have been those with Firewire-only gear that is difficult or expensive to replace.

That would include a lot of Firewire-based audio equipment, as well as some old Firewire-based film scanners (such as some of the Nikon CoolScan ones). And then, of course, there are MiniDV and Digital8 camcorders – where losing Firewire on the computer side forces the use of analog transfers.

My father had a Sears and Roebuck wire recorder (spool of thin steel wire passing through the recording head). I had a spool that recorded his dance band rehearsals from the late 1940s. It took me forever to find an individual that had a wire recorder and was capable of transferring the content to an audio CD.

Same goes for reel-to-reel tape recorders, 8 track tapes, cassette players, the list goes on. If the user is wiling they can install macOS 15 Sequoia on an external drive which still supports Firewire. Or they can find someone with an older Mac to do the same. An analog transfer is not the only option.