Sony DCR-DVD201 and iMovie

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Sony DCR-DVD201 and iMovie

Help! Help! I checked previous posts and I am not sure how to solve this problem. I have a Sony DCR-DVD201 DVD camcorder. It has a USB cable. How can I use iMovie with this camcorder? I saw a previous post, but I did not understand the answer. What software do I have to purchase and will I be able to hook up the camcorder directly to my mac or do I copy from the Sony camcorder made DVD? Please help. Thanks!

G4 Powerbook, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Nov 4, 2006 6:52 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

C Vidovich

Level 1

4 points

Nov 4, 2006 7:51 PM in response to aaglobalind.com

Get a fire wire 4 pin for the sony camcorder and 6 pin for the computer
aka 1394 cable.

Just did it this week. Once you open iMOvie & then connect the cables turn on the Camera to VCR mode it will recognize the camera and push import and you sohould be good to go. Teh other great thing is there is no buffering between clips like the old fashion way ! yeah apple!

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Answer 2

Nov 4, 2006 11:49 PM in response to aaglobalind.com

iMovie does not support DVD-corders.

so, Plan A) swap it to/buy a miniDV camcorder, that's what iApps are made for..

Plan B) ... the painstaking route...:

* make sure, the disk is "finalized" in that device (read the manual of recorder ...)
* if it is NOT standard sized, do NOT insert such a disk into a slot-in drive... that could get seriously damaged... miniDVD only in slide-drives... if your Mac has a slot-in drive, buy an external dvd-drive...
* finally, it needs a conversion as any DVD, you need 3rd party ($$) apps to do so, your options in recommended order:

* DVDxDV (free trial, 25$, Pro: 90$)
* Apple mpeg2 plugin (29$) + Streamclip (free)
* Cinematize >60$
* Mpeg2Works >25$ + Apple plug-in
* Toast 6/7 allows converting to dv/insert dvd, hit apple-k
* connect a miniDV Camcorder with analogue input to a DVD-player and transfer disk to tape/use as converter

non of these apps override copyprotection mechanisms as on commercial dvds...

http://danslagle.com/mac/iMovie/tips_tricks/6010.shtml
http://danslagle.com/mac/iMovie/tips_tricks/6018.shtml

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Answer 3

Nov 13, 2006 2:08 PM in response to Karsten Schlüter

Cinematize worked perfectly. It was the one program that maintained the aspect ratio when importing. The DVDxDV would always import the videos as 4:3, even though the DVDs were recored as 16:9 on the Sony DCR-DVD201. As for the other suggestion about hooking up a 4 pin to 6 pin firewire cable, that cannot work with this model of Sony DVD camcorder. There is only a USB port, it is impossible to use any other cable other than a USB cable to connect this Sony DCR-DVD201 to the Macintosh. Thanks for all of the help!

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