How do connect a Video recorder to my Mac

[PaulW]

I have the need to copy Video's onto DVD. I have a Mac mini and an external DVD recorder, but how do I connect the video machine to my Mac.

I was going to use my digital camcorder and record the video back onto that and then connect to my computer via Firewire. Unfortunately my model doesn't allow that when I connect up the video cables.

Short of buying a combination Video/DVd recorder, is there a simple way to plug a video recorder into a computer?

 

[ora]

Hmmn, i think you'd have to either buy a video capture card or use a camcorder of some sort.

Assuming you have a computer type dvd writer, it can only take digital data, so you need to digitize the video data somehow. For that you'll need either a vid capture card to give yourself one of the several video in systems, or the camcorder which will spit out the data vis firewire. Either way you'll also need plenty of HD space to store the data on temporarily (and it will be a lot), and you'd want a fair bit of ram to make the dvd coding a reasonable speed. You may well find its cheaper to buy a combo vhs/dvd box or to pay some local firm to transfer them for you.

 

[eric2006]

You could use something like this:
http://www.elgato.com/index.php?file=products_eyetv250

At $200, it's an investment. Of course, you can use it for other things too. There's many people that will transfer movies, but it can get expensive if you have a ton of them.