I bought a Sony DCR-TRV10 Video/Camcorder w/Memory Stick for digital stills in February [ancient "digital" history now, it seems], and went to Europe for 6 mos, returning w/some 1,000 recorded images & many video tapes. I want to view & print [Mem-Stick stills & stills extracted from the video tapes] them in the best quality possible, which I understand means using the firewire port on the camera & the one on my turquoise G3 [OS 8.5.1].

However, when I bought a cable [for $50!] which linked the two, nothing happened onscreen, presumably because I need some kind of software to facilitate the data transfer into Mac-readable format. I returned the cord, got a MSAC-US1 from Sony, [with help from the MacFixIt site], and while I can view the pix, I'm not delighted w/the quality of these jpeg images, and want to find out how to access them directly from the Memory Stick and/or camera [for tapes] via firewire, to see if the quality of the printed picture is better. I know nor understand zip about Firewire.When I went to MacWorld to research the subject, I got a bunch of overwhelming stuff which appears to not relate to my now "old" TRV-10 camera.

I would like *direction* [ie: the best Forum, or, links to sites] in finding answers to the following questions:

What software & cables do I need to do this, given my apparently outdated equipment?

If there are several software packages as options, which are the best & why?

What software package is best to help me extract stills from the video tapes?

Thank you for your patience,
Karen

[bradoesch]

I have a TRV-510 with memory to store pictures (not on memory sticks, mind you). I hook the camera up to iMac with the FireWire cable, and use iMovie to transfer the pictures. Once they are connected and iMac recognizes that the camera connected, I set the switch to VTR, and using the camera, look at the pictures on the screen on the camera (which also displays them in iMovie). When I select the one I want, I double click "import", and it brings the pictures in as a still movie, I guess I could say. Once you have all your pictures, you need to click on them and go "save frame as", and choose a format and give them a name. Note that they won't be any better quality than a low end digital camera, because video is shot at 640x480, and that's pretty poor. So this whole process is totally digital, and there is no quality loss. The other option for my camera, is to use the serial connection. Well, I don't have a serial port, and I don't want one, either. And the software they include is crap. That's what I do, at least. Hope that helps,

Brad

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Why 1984, won't be
like "1984"

[ussfolsom]

Hehehe, I was going to do the exact opposite of you, go out and buy a memory stick adapter because the pictures via firewire were pretty bad. Guess it doesn't make any difference at all.

Download iMovie 1 for free and get them that way. I don't think you should even bother though, direct off the memory stick I thought the pictures would be better, but I guess they aren't. So converting them to DV first and having to deinterlace them isn't going to improve the quality any.

[AJ]

Buy the Sony Memory Stick transfer thingy for USB, and the memory sticks will appear as a disk on the desktop.

AJ

Hey, bradoesch, ussfolsom & AJ:

Thank you for responding. Now I have a confession to make: Since I posted my original question, I've made some new discoveries, which I'm partly embarrassed about revealing. Here goes: I was first using my MSAC-US1 Memory Stick reader/writer on my 2nd computer, a Powerbook in the livingroom; At the time, I thought I had to have OS 9 on my main computer to use this thing, and since I have OS 8.5.1 on the desktop G3 where the printer is, I didn't think it would work. So, I used it on my laptop w/ 0s9, and I would then copy images to a zip disc & bring them back to the "big" computer where the printer was. Well, turns out I CAN use the thing on my 8.5.1, and, DUH, the image quality markedly improved by not being compressed onto the zip. An additional factor was that I'm using a sweet little shareware program called "Image Buddy", which helps you make contact sheets, pages of prints, etc, and I think I ended up inadvertently "double compressing" some of the images, so of course, that would make the quality worse. Well, once set up with the G3, the MSAC-US1 worked fine, and the jpeg images from my Memory Stick were MUCH improved!! So, there you have it. I'm still wanting to know the "how-to's" of trying this via a direct digital firewire cord connection + some [??] software, so I can compare the 2 productions... So if any of you knows the nuts and bolts of "making it so", I'd appreciate that. At least my initial terror that all these gorgeous shots would turn out crappy has been calmed.

Best, Karen