Connverting Mini DV to Macbook Pro

Older MacBook Pro have a FireWire port. Some are Firewire-400, others are FireWire-800. The faster Firewire 800 ports use additional pins and wires in the cable to implement balanced drivers and receivers, or push-pull drivers and receivers, and that is why it can run faster.

FireWire-800 uses nine pins. FireWire-400 uses six pins (including two power pins). When implemented in camera equipment, they leave out the power pins and implement FireWire-400 with four pins.

To convert a FireWire-800 port to use FireWire-400, you just plug in a simple adapter that leaves out the extra pins, and the port adapts to the slower speed automatically. You can also use a cable that does the conversion (or both conversions) in one cable.

To make this connection, starting at the camera, you would need a cable that ends in a four-pin connector. If you were connecting to a Mac that already had a FireWire-800 port, you could use this cable and nothing more:

Monoprice 9-pin/4-pin BILINGUAL FireWire 800/FireWire 400 Cable, 6ft Black Product # 3541 $4.72

Your current Mac does not have a Firewire port, but there is a pair of adapters that can make it work for you:

Thunderbolt 3 to FireWire

If you need to connect a FireWire 800 or FireWire 400 device to a new Mac using the Thunderbolt 3 port, you're in for a kludge of adapters. At the moment, there's no direct Thunderbolt 3 to FireWire adapter available, and we doubt one will ever be made. However, Apple makes a Thunderbolt 2 to FireWire 800 adapter, which you could combine with the Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 bidirectional adapter mentioned above.

from:

https://www.lifewire.com/mac-usb-c-to-old-peripherals-4122273

Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter $49.00

Apple Thunderbolt[2] to FireWire[-800] Adapter $29.00

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http://gdlp01.c-wss.com/gds/4/0300000884/01/hv30nim-en.pdf

Page 76 of the User manual shows the USB-C is next to the SD card slot. But it says can only be used for still images.

If you want to send movies, the manual uses the term IEEE1394 (which Apple calls FireWire) and uses a 4-pin connector on the camera's HDV/DV port, converted with cable to FireWire-400 (six pin) second cable shown. [The two dropped pins are power.]

You can obtain a USB-C to FireWire-800 cable (nine-pin) and the adapter to FireWire-400 (six pin) is a simple re-wire, no active components.

The "trick" used with IEEE1394/FireWire is that the camera has already digitized and packetized the video information to save it, and if delivered via FireWire, no expensive and quirky "image capture" Hardware is required, just transfer the pre-captured data already in the camera and use it directly.

Specs available online show a USB-2 interface available. Some of my canon cameras use the MINi size connector (not to be confused with the Micro size).