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TRV 480 to MacBook Pro 17"

I have just bought a MacBook Pro 17" and a Sony TRV480E digital 8 camera. I also bought the sony iLink cable. The MBP does noy have a firewire port that resembles the connectors on the iLink cable, and using USB the camera is not recognised. Unless I can figure this out, I guess that I am stuffed!

I cannot nip into my local dealer, I am on site in Uganda and had the stuff shipped out to me.

Does anyone out there have any ideas?

Tom Gowans
Sat, 22 Jul 2006 03:38:48 -0700

Tom,

Firewire (IEEE 1394) ports have two form-factors: 4-pins and 6-pins (see photos below).

The i.Link connector uses the 4-pins version and so does most camcorders. Does your MacBook Pro have a 6-pins connector? If so, you can buy an 4-pins to 6-pins adapter and you are in business. Otherwise, you'll have to buy a Firewire PCMCIA card for your notebook.

Chieh Cheng
Sat, 22 Jul 2006 20:47:23 -0700

I too seem to be having some issues with transferring video from my Sony trv 480 to a 17" MacBook Pro. I have the 4 to 6 pin cable, but the instruction manual for the camcorder is confusing. In the manual there is much discussion about transferring video to and from a vcr, using the '4'pin input on the camera. I hooked up the camcorder and laptop with the cable, hoping it would be just that easy. But there was no 'automatic detection' on the part of the laptop.

Does software need to be loaded onto the Mac to make this work? The camcorder manual discusses such software, but it seems to be intended for PC's, and not Macs. The Mac is supposed to recognize the connection, or so I thought. And since the camcoder is a couple of years old, I have no idea whether software was sent with this camcorder.

Which leads me to my next question. Below that 'A/V' input on the camcorder is an irregular shaped '5' pin input, with a 'computer symbol' next to that input. Is there some special cable out there that Sony is going to require us to buy, to allow us to transfer video from this camcorder to the Mac?

And my final item, also coming from the camcorder manual. It states, almost as an afterthought, that the best iLink cable to use for transferring video is a 4 pin to 4 pin cable. So which is it, Sony? 4,5,6 pin!

Any input you may have on the topic would be greatly appreciated.

Brad

Brad McQueen
Fri, 16 Mar 2007 15:23:19 -0800

I'll share my experiences getting a TRV510 working on my PowerMac G4. First you need the proper 4 pin to 6 pin Firewire cable. After I got my cable, I plugged the camera in. Nothing. I turned the camera on , changed modes, still nothing. I did some digging around and downloaded and old copy of iMovie (I think version 3). The software is the key. To use it, turn the camera on and launch iMovie. With the camera in VTR mode, you can full control the playback remotely from the computer. With the camera in "Camera" mode, you can record live footage straight to the computer. Even with iMovie installed, Finder has absolutely no interaction with the camera.

Lihtan
Sun, 25 Mar 2007 16:31:30 -0800

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