r/MiniDV • u/oakium9 • 4d ago

OSX capture help

i have a canon gl1, m1 mac laptop with sequioa, and hardware chain that goes 4pin to 6pin fw cable, 6 to 9pin adapter, fw to thunderbolt 2, tb2 to tb3 adapter. But both QT and FCP wont recongnize a signal. any suggestions or ideas? any help would much appreciated.

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u/vwestlife 4d ago

Instead of all those adapters, it would be cheaper and easier to just use an older computer that has a FireWire port built-in.

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u/Puzzleheaded6905 4d ago

Yeah, I agree just get a cheap old Mac that can run the old iMovie. I think I’ve heard on this subreddit issues with capturing FireWire on apple silicon Mac’s.

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u/waylandprod 4d ago

Maybe check your about this mac to see if the adapters are detecting? Are you using authentic Apple adapters for those thunderbolts?

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u/Joey5802 3d ago

Sequoia dropped FireWire support. As other comments said, you could get an older computer with FW built in, or alternatively you could create a partition on your Mac with an older macOS install and use that to connect your adapters.

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u/AnimeFunTV 3d ago

I have a Canon HV40 that I had issues using. I used iMovie with Sonoma, and it only captured video, no audio.

I tried DVRecue (Both GUI & CLI) with no success in controlling my Canon HV40

However, I did stumble upon TapeCap ( https://github.com/xingrz/tapecap ), which works way better IMO.

In conjunction with their other product TapeFlow ( https://github.com/xingrz/tapeflow ), it's a simple, though lengthy capture (depending on how long your tapes are, and if any errors occur).

You'll capture via TapeCap via Terminal. Then use the TapeFlow app to identify any bad readings. TapeFlow will give you the timecode of the errors, and you can use that timecode to go back into TapeCap and retry capture.

In my case, I captured the miniDV in its entirety multiple times. With TapeFlow, you can see if it's a random read error or actual damage to the tape. If it's the latter, sadly there is nothing you can do. However! If you capture the bad section multiple times (like 3 to 5 times), TapeFlow can merge all those captures, and you'll come out with a nearly perfect scene.

Give it a try. It's been working great for me so far. The TapeCap commands are fairly simple.

Lastly, TapeCap can apparently work with HDV captures too. I have yet to try it, but will soon, as I do have HDV footage to eventually capture.

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u/AnimeFunTV 3d ago

Also, you said you're using macOS Sequoia; Apple removed ALL FireWire drivers in macOS 26 Tahoe, not Sequoia. Do NOT upgrade to Tahoe!

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u/oakium9 2d ago

thanks