Digitising Mini DV Tapes

[pflower]

I have lots of old mini DV tapes - mostly family home movies.  I also have a Sony mini DV player which I am pretty sure has a firewire 400 interface but the charger/adapter to it doesn't work.  Without it I can't tell if the player still works.   I can probably find a replacement adapter/charger at a reasonable price but a replacement player is quite expensive.

 I used to edit these in the first version of Final Cut Pro on my old Mac, but output to tapes rather than to digital files. So assuming that the player does work, I assume I can get a firewire to USB-C adapter and then edit in the current version of FCPX to create digital files for my children.  Anyone able to verify that?

But if the player isn't working has anyone got any suggestions as to what I can do without spending a fortune getting some professional service to digitise these?

Thanks

[Peter McLennan]

There are DV camcorders for sale on ebay, many with Firewire.  I used my TRV 400 to digitize over 50 hours of legacy DV tapes to AVI over Firewire.
Bear in mind that this is a real time operation.  It took for effing ever, but the results (SDTV notwithstanding) were good.

Solving the power supply issue might be easy for someone with electronics knowledge. Try your local 14 year old boy.

[Joe Towner]

Yea, the iLink -> 400-800 FW cable -> FW 800 - TB1/2 adapter -> TB1/2 - TB3 adapter setup should work fine.  Cost compare between a replacement power supply with a whole camera with power cord - the camera setup was like $50.  I have an old Mac that can be setup for import and just let it run.