Sorry, Rusty and Andy. Nice idea if it would work, but alas, MiniDV is not the same thing as the mini tapes that will go into a VCR. The small VHS format that goes into an adapter that fits a VCR is VHS-C. That is NOT the same thing as MiniDV. It will NOT work.
MiniDV puts the information on the tape in digital format. VHS (and therefore its -C manifestation) uses analog encoding. There is no way to even convert the formats within a VHS player as both formats REQUIRE the use of tape in their respective sizes and formats that wrap around high RPM drum heads. Your best bet is a cheap MiniDV camcorder that doesn't do much more than let you run tapes through and get a FireWire output. Use it for only that and coddle it moving forward as that will be the only way, short of an expensive deck or service, to access those tapes in the future. Then get your fancy one that uses a hard drive or memory card. The big advantage to these is that the time you spend transferring video to your computer to edit it is greatly reduced as well as it's a computer-readable format. I'm jealous. Here's a cool Panasonic one that gets about an hour of 1080i HD on a 4GB card. I heard this one talked about on a podcast the other day. On Amazon: <http://tinyurl.com/29tft2> j. On Aug 17, 2007, at 12:00 PM, Rusty <rustyjb at bellsouth.net> wrote: > > Radio shack makes one - $20-30. > > Thursday, August 16, 200711:00 PMAndy Arnoldandyarnold1 at mac.com > >> I have a Canon MiniDV camcorder that is acting up. I really don't >> want to repair it, I would like to get a new hard drive or SD memory >> card camcorder. The only problem is I have dozens of MiniDV tapes >> that still need to be imported into iMovie. Does anyone know of a >> solution, like a cassette adapter that plays in a regular VCR, for >> example? >> >> Thanks >> Andy -- Jonathan Fletcher jfletch at newmediaconstco.com Project Foreman NewMedia Construction Co.
