TOPIC:

In 1996 (I think) I bought the SONY VX 1000. I made dozens and dozens of videotapes in the DV format and I have an old Canon camcorder which is not recognized by FCPX (and not on Apple's list of approved camcorders). I also have a SONY DV CAM tape deck, DSR-45, which is also not recognized by FCP. Is there a means of using either one of these machines with the appropriate cables (or possibly a converter) to get this media into FCP? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! I know I could buy yet another old DV camcorder from EBay that is recognized by FCP but I'm trying to avoid this if possible...

I've captured successfully from a DSR-10, as recently as last week. Maybe there's something else going on.

Which Mac / OS / FCP version, and your cabling config?

I'm on Monterrey 12.6 and FCP is current too 10.6.4. I'm connecting the SONY DSR-45 via a Firewire 4 pin to USB into my M1 MacMini. I also connected it to my old MacBook Pro (2013)and still a no go...

You could see if recording with QuickTime Player works. If that works you know the cabling/interfaces are good.

That is also not working either. (Quicktime) I think I will purchase and try using another firewire cable to see if that's the problem.

Locate a used FOCUS Firestore FS5 and be done with it. I have four of the suckers. One with internal storage and the others accept CF cards. (I use a CF card adapter that accept SD cards and that works fine.) One cable connection - camera firewire to device. Couldn't be more fool proof or simpler.

It's considered a DTE (Direct to Edit) device. Eliminates the ingest problems caused by NLE & OS & camera connectivity / compatibility issues. Play video. Hit record. Hit stop. Transfer to computer. Don't be squeamish about buying one because there's always a market for them on eBay and it'll save hours of aggravation configuring and trouble shooting and visiting forums trying to get things working.

alekomon wrote:

I'm on Monterrey 12.6 and FCP is current too 10.6.4. I'm connecting the SONY DSR-45 via a Firewire 4 pin to USB into my M1 MacMini. I also connected it to my old MacBook Pro (2013)and still a no go...

Who makes the Firewire Mini to USB cable? I have luck using a Firewire to Thunderbolt made by Apple. The thing that sucks about it is that I need a Firewire 4-to-8 cable which fortunately I have as that's what the adapter accepts, then I need a Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 4 adapter. So many dongles! Such is the life of a Mac user.

alekomon wrote:

I'm on Monterrey 12.6 and FCP is current too 10.6.4. I'm connecting the SONY DSR-45 via a Firewire 4 pin to USB into my M1 MacMini. I also connected it to my old MacBook Pro (2013)and still a no go...

As far as I know, you cannot capture via USB on a MAC. On Windows, this might work, but I have never seen a MAC capable of capturing video via USB.

Capturing by USB works fine on Apple Silicon Macs. I have HDMI to USB by Pengo, ioGear, and a cheap no-name device I bought on Amazon. I know of people using the Elgato CamLink 4K as well. People are also using Blackmagic ATEMs with USB-C out. I know people using AJA U-TAP can go from SDI (as well as HDMI) to USB3 as well on Macs.

I don't know anyone going from Firewire to USB though. That may not be possible. But capturing video through USB on Macs is not a problem.

Hey, thanks for the info. That's good to learn. I was speaking about Intel Macs and more specifically capturing thru FCP and Quicktime. I wasn't aware Silicon Macs treated that any differently.

I am making some progress here! My silicon Mac is recognizing my SONY DV Deck and I am able to capture some clips, however, another problem has now arisen. When I stop the capture, FCP is getting hung up on capturing the data because when I close the capture window I either get an error message that the video is still processing or the clip is not appearing as a captured clip. I may try what you suggested. Thank you so much for taking the time to respond!!!