I don't need a video camera shaped paperweight.

June 21, 2009 4:24 PM

I've inherited a Canon Optura 100 1.3 Megapixel video camera. There's a tiny video of my dad on there that I want to put on YouTube for relatives. I haven't owned a video camera before and really want to learn how to use this, also for other things... but the manual is huge! I've tried sifting through it, but I have a Mac and I see nothing about Mac compatibility anywhere and I don't see any cables that look familiar. I know it *should* be easy... hellppp!

Are there any good web sites on this or do you have experience with it yourself? What do I do?

posted by miss lynnster to computers & internet (4 comments total)

The Amazon page says it uses firewire — probably the miniature firewire connector; most Macs have firewire ports, so you might just need a firewire cable with the right kind of connector on each end (probably 6-pin to 4-pin).

Alternately, pop out the MMC card and use it in an memory card reader. Multi-format usb card readers are like $15. Not the fastest transfer in the world but I bet it'd work.
posted by hattifattener at 5:02 PM on June 21

Looks like it only has a firewire (1394) connector. If you have that on your computer, just buy a cable, if not try to find a friend that has firewire on their system.
posted by sammyo at 5:03 PM on June 21

Do you have iMovie on your Mac? That's the program that's designed for grabbing video from firewire camcorders, editing it (adding captions or music or whatever), and exporting to an MPEG4 file that can be uploaded to YouTube. A quick search for "imovie youtube" will get you some tutorials, but you shouldn't need them.

You probably need to buy a cable as it looks from the Amazon description that Canon were too cheap to include the right one. "IEEE 1394" cable is what Apple calls "FireWire"; it should look like the cable in the picture on this page; the small end goes into the camera and the larger end into your Mac. Unless you have one of the few recent MacBooks that doesn't have FireWire, in which case you need a USB cardreader for the MMC card as hattifattener says.
posted by nowonmai at 7:16 PM on June 21

Worked perfectly! I just got the cable in the mail yesterday (on Amazon, it was a penny for the cable and $4.99 for delivery!). Last night I plugged the camera in and it was already forwarded to the snippet I'd found of my late dad. imovie just pulled the scene out without me even telling it where to edit, I put a quick title on it, and poof. Done.

Now if I could just stop crying after not having seen my goofball ol' dad's wave in so long. It's a relief to see, but tough.

Thanks for your help.
posted by miss lynnster at 7:30 AM on June 25