MacBook won't recognize camcorder

Hi, welcome to apple forum.

For handycam to be recognized by iMovie, you must use the firewire connection.

Buy the right one with regular firewire on one of the end to be plugged to macbook and smaller interface on the other end to be plugged to the handycam.

And set your cam to video instead of camera.

Good Luck

Michael is right, you need a 4-pin to 6-pin FireWire cable like this one:

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?productLearnMore=M87 06G%2FA

Part of the DV specification is that it uses FireWire, not USB. So, iMovie, Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro all need FireWire connections to the cameras. If you have still pictures on your camera that are stored in a card, you might need a card reader to pull them off, you may not be able to plug the camera directly in with USB.

-Doug

Ive tried they very same thing with a sony usb mini dv camcorder and could not get it to work. I ended up using my PC but the quality of the USB stream is nothing on DV captured by firewire. The video is crisp as can be when viewed on a TV through the camera but the usb stream looked more like a bad VHS no matter what video software i used.

With a camera like that you would be better off getting a usb video capture device with a composite input. The results will be a lot better and its cheaper than buying a new firewire camera!

Hi Andrew,

I think he has firewire port on his camcorder based on this:

http://www.buyersedge.com/Product/prodDesc.asp?XOS=3408290&pageView=1&iDZ=0&s_kw cid=dcr%20hc21

And doesn't require to buy another firewire camcorder, only need to buy firewire cable that is quite cheap nowaday.

Peace out.