DVD to iMovie?

bsharpbsharp
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I have some old family videos I want to move to my Mac and edit in iMovie. I've found a company that will transfer them to DVD for a steep price, but my Mac won't recognize the DVD. However, they do play on my Panasonic DVD Player.



Is there a way to transfer these to Quicktime so I can edit them in iMovie?



I have the original 8mm videos, but the camera has died. I don't want to buy a new 8mm camera to transfer the videos because I'd rather get a new digital camera.



Any thoughts? Thanks.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    jpfjpf Posts: 167member
    Not legally.



    You might want to ask the company to give you DV QuickTime files of your 8mm...



    And converting 8mm to DVD shouldn't be that much, should it?
  • Reply 2 of 7
    thuh freakthuh freak Posts: 2,664member
    [quote]Originally posted by JPF:

    <strong>Not legally. </strong><hr></blockquote>



    whoa. there shouldn't be any legal issues here. a person is attempting to rip a dvd for personal use. people are allowed to make a reasonable backup of media. furthermore, the dvd is of his own home videos. unless he sold/gave up the rights to his own family movies, theres no legal issue.



    but, as far as ripping the dvd, i dont know of any way of doing it. it might be a problem with the mac's drive. try to play other dvds. if that doesn't work, u may have to get the drive replaced to do anything on it.
  • Reply 3 of 7
    jpfjpf Posts: 167member
    [quote]Originally posted by thuh Freak:

    <strong>



    whoa. there shouldn't be any legal issues here. a person is attempting to rip a dvd for personal use. people are allowed to make a reasonable backup of media. furthermore, the dvd is of his own home videos. unless he sold/gave up the rights to his own family movies, theres no legal issue.



    but, as far as ripping the dvd, i dont know of any way of doing it. it might be a problem with the mac's drive. try to play other dvds. if that doesn't work, u may have to get the drive replaced to do anything on it.</strong><hr></blockquote>





    I should have clarified a little. I think he/she is talking about a cooked DVD.



    You cannot reproduce a video signal coming from a consumer DVD player successfully without adding illegal hardware to do it. Whether its a DVD-R or DVD, you still have to get hardware to reproduce it from a consumer DVD player. You cannot also legally copy a DVD from your Mac but you can reproduce a DVD-R which is different. There's tons of software and hardware out there to do it.



    I'm also assuming the original poster doesn't have a Mac with a DVD drive to play it. So he was trying to dump his/her DVD content into his/her Mac?



    The best way, IMHO, is to get QuickTime DV files of your 8mm on a CD-ROM. Then you can play with iMovie.
  • Reply 4 of 7
    bsharpbsharp Posts: 64member
    Thank you for your replies.



    I'm using a 1ghz ddr (mirror doors) Powermac. I took one of the 8mm cartridges to a local duplication house and they put it on DVD-R. For some reason, my Mac doesn't recognize the content, but my home entertainment DVD system does. I was hoping I could somehow convert the DVD files to quicktime, so I could edit them in iMovie.



    Looks like your idea, JPF, of duplicating the tapes again, this time in quicktime and on a CD might be better. At $55 per disc (the duplication house's charge), I would probably be better off getting a Formac video converter, borrowing an 8mm camera and doing the copying myself. Do you agree?



    If anyone else has any ideas, I'd love to hear them.
  • Reply 5 of 7
    brussellbrussell Posts: 9,812member
    The DVD won't be copy protected, so you should be able to copy the files onto your computer if you have a DVD drive. Then you could buy the Quicktime 6 mpeg player ($30 I think) and convert them to Quicktime.



    Is the Mac just not playing the DVD, or is it not seeing the disc at all?



    You could also find a friend with a DVD drive on a PC and see if it works.



    I just bought a digitial camcorder with analog input so I could convert old home movies to DV, and then put them into iMovie etc. etc. Then I also had a new camcorder for new videos. To me, that makes more sense than buying a dedicated converter.
  • Reply 6 of 7
    bsharpbsharp Posts: 64member
    The DVD won't be copy protected, so you should be able to copy the files onto your computer if you have a DVD drive. Then you could buy the Quicktime 6 mpeg player ($30 I think) and convert them to Quicktime.

    BRussel:



    Thanks for the reply.

    See my notes below:



    Is the Mac just not playing the DVD, or is it not seeing the disc at all? The OS X finder recognizes the DVD, but indicates that it is empty. Quicktime, iMovie or iDVD don't recognize any files on the disk, either.



    I just bought a digitial camcorder with analog input so I could convert old home movies to DV, and then put them into iMovie etc. etc.



    What brand/model did you buy? Someone told me that Sony was the only company to make a camcorder that could read old 8mm tapes.



    Thanks for your ideas.



    BSharp
  • Reply 7 of 7
    wagneritewagnerite Posts: 174member
    direction for ripping dvd:



    <a href="http://forums.appleinsider.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=7&t=001965"; target="_blank">http://forums.appleinsider.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=7&t=001965</a>;
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