FireWire, HDV and adaptors in an age of Thunderbolt

[Wingsley]

I have a 2010-vintage Canon Vixia HV40 camcorder. It is HDV (high def, but uses MiniDV tapes). I have loads of old footage in both standard-def and high-def on MiniDV cassettes. Not ready to give them up yet. I have no idea exactly how many minutes total that are stored on tape, but it obviously many hours. I used to record public meetings. The HV40 uses a FireWire 400 mini-connector port. I have a pair of old adaptors laying around that I haven't used in years. IIRC, one adaptor converts FireWire 400 to 800. A second adaptor converts FireWire 800 to Thunderbolt 2 (my iMac offers Thunderbolt 2 ports).

If I were to replace my iMac with a newer machine, what would I have to do to bridge the FireWire to Thunderbolt 3?

Also: I have Final Cut Studio 3 (which includes Final Cut Pro 7) installed on my iMac. If I wanted to but new hardware, would the latest Final Cut be able to handle my old HDV footage (converting it from FireWire to Thunderbolt 3, presumably) or would it be time to learn a new NLE app?

 

[MacUser2525]

I have a 2010-vintage Canon Vixia HV40 camcorder. It is HDV (high def, but uses MiniDV tapes). I have loads of old footage in both standard-def and high-def on MiniDV cassettes. Not ready to give them up yet. I have no idea exactly how many minutes total that are stored on tape, but it obviously many hours. I used to record public meetings. The HV40 uses a FireWire 400 mini-connector port. I have a pair of old adaptors laying around that I haven't used in years. IIRC, one adaptor converts FireWire 400 to 800. A second adaptor converts FireWire 800 to Thunderbolt 2 (my iMac offers Thunderbolt 2 ports).

If I were to replace my iMac with a newer machine, what would I have to do to bridge the FireWire to Thunderbolt 3?

Also: I have Final Cut Studio 3 (which includes Final Cut Pro 7) installed on my iMac. If I wanted to but new hardware, would the latest Final Cut be able to handle my old HDV footage (converting it from FireWire to Thunderbolt 3, presumably) or would it be time to learn a new NLE app?

No clue on the editing software but the thunderbolt ports are supposed to be backward compatible. If the adapter physically fits the new port it is supposed to be seen as a version 2 device and used as such. Now this being the compute industry good luck if it does, they tell so many lies and cut so many corners to save two cents per device...

 

[Juicy Box]

For the adapter, You could use this for TB3>TB2:

Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter

Effortlessly connect your Mac to a Thunderbolt 2 device with the Apple Thunderbolt 3 Adapter. Buy now at apple.com

www.apple.com

If you already have a FW800 to FW400 adapter, and it has the right sex to connect your camera, then the above adapter will be all you need HW wise.

For SW, maybe someone else could answer that, but if it is just to transferring the video from the digital tapes to a video file, then iMovie should be fine.

 

[iluvmacs99]

I have a 2010-vintage Canon Vixia HV40 camcorder. It is HDV (high def, but uses MiniDV tapes). I have loads of old footage in both standard-def and high-def on MiniDV cassettes. Not ready to give them up yet. I have no idea exactly how many minutes total that are stored on tape, but it obviously many hours. I used to record public meetings. The HV40 uses a FireWire 400 mini-connector port. I have a pair of old adaptors laying around that I haven't used in years. IIRC, one adaptor converts FireWire 400 to 800. A second adaptor converts FireWire 800 to Thunderbolt 2 (my iMac offers Thunderbolt 2 ports).

If I were to replace my iMac with a newer machine, what would I have to do to bridge the FireWire to Thunderbolt 3?

Also: I have Final Cut Studio 3 (which includes Final Cut Pro 7) installed on my iMac. If I wanted to but new hardware, would the latest Final Cut be able to handle my old HDV footage (converting it from FireWire to Thunderbolt 3, presumably) or would it be time to learn a new NLE app?

I was in a similar situation as you were just last year with older DV footage that I had from tapes and older DV stuff in DVDs and I had a much harder time trying to connect them to newer systems through adapters. So instead I bought a used PowerMac G5 that can run an older Final Cut Express 4 and I use that to import all the legacy DV and HDV footages from Firewire 400 port into FCE. I just recently restored an old DV family movie into a much more 1080p digital format using the G5 and my Mac Pro. FCE 4 still supports these DV and HDV formats as standard and once I had saved them in digital format, I can copy them through my Gigabit network to my other more powerful and more modern Macs to process them via Davinci Resolve 16, iMovie or VideoProc. I would re-encode the DV footage into a more modern h.264 format and upscale them to 1080p if need be. I also found out that for some reason, the PowerMac G5 DVD drive was able to read some of the obscure DVDs made by some legacy recorders and older machines that my newer Mac Pro with its internal burner and Mac Mini with an external DVD burner were having a heck of a time even reading and decoding!

I work in a thrift store where I know that some video conversion stores and history curators keep older Macs, like my PowerMac G5 or even a G4 or older iMacs with legacy Firewire ports just to use it to convert some of their clients' DV and HDV footage from video cameras of 10 years prior. They would come to our store and buy up all our HDV camcorders and Betamax players from time to time. You are not the only one that have this need, which is why older obsolete PowerMac G4 and G5 are still in demand for this particular reason.

As we are moving into Catalina and 64bit, they are not very kind towards older 32bit legacy devices and software, whereby even Apple advised people to keep older Macs just in case you need to do some legacy conversions.

 

[Fishrrman]

For a new Mac with thunderbolt3, you would need:

Thunderbolt3-to-thunderbolt2 connector
and
Thunderbolt2-to-firewire800 connector
and
Firewire800 to firewire400 cable

... all daisy-chained together.

There's no guarantee this would work. I don't think this connection scenario passes "firewire bus power" through the entire connection, so your firewire device (camera) needs to provide its own.

Do you have an Apple Store nearby?

If so, you might bring in the camcorder, firewire cable, tbolt2-to-firewire adapter, and ask someone at the genius bar to connect it to a new Mac using the tbolt2-to-tbolt3 cable -- to see if it will work BEFORE you lay out money for an additional cable.

 

[Juicy Box]

If so, you might bring in the camcorder, firewire cable, tbolt2-to-firewire adapter, and ask someone at the genius bar to connect it to a new Mac using the tbolt2-to-tbolt3 cable -- to see if it will work BEFORE you lay out money for an additional cable.

This is a good idea, and they might be able to assist with the SW side of things too.

If there isn't an Apple store near by, Apple's TB3>TB2 adapter is sold at Best Buy which is a lot more common.

The OP could buy it from Best Buy and try it out. If it doesn't work, it wouldn't be hard to return it.

 

[Wingsley]

No Apple stores within 100 miles. Nearest BestBuy is 65 miles, so it's a special occasion to visit. I don't know if those folks at BestBuy would be technically astute enough to help.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll keep all of this in mind.