It just works...until it doesn't
I found myself recently in need to convert Mini DV tapes to MP4 files with a 2021 Macbook Air. There were several steps to overcome.
1. We are in the middle of trying to sell our house and could not find our Mini DV camcorder.
2. The easy way to convert Mini DV to MP4 is through the use of a firewire cable. I have no computer with that interface nor a cable to do so.
3. Once 1 and 2 are solved, errors abound and made simple capture impossible.
Solving for 1, I found a cheap Mini DV camcorder on shopgoodwill.com for $20. It did not work. Every tape that I put in errored. It took removing the front housing and prying the board up away from the retention clip and it worked as it appeared to be grounding. I'll add a link here if I can recall the site that guided me as well as recall the specific error. So, #1 is resolved.
Solving for 2, my daughter had an ancient Macbook Pro from 2011 she was not taking to college. Finding an appropriate firewire cable off Amazon was easy. So, #2 (heh) is resolved.
3 was a problem. I would fire up Quicktime, start the camcorder playback, and eventually (sometimes within seconds) the capture would fail. I had no way of updating the MacOS and didn't want to purchase old software just for this project. After considerable googling and bashing my head against the table, I found this blog: https://leolabs.org/blog/capture-minidv-on-macos Léo has a very easy to follow section regarding the packages and steps needed to run capture through a script rather than rely on a very flaky Quicktime import process. Even though the tapes were riddled with errors, my captures worked. I suggest giving it a read if you happen to be doing something as ancient as I am.
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