Advice on importing Hi-8

I have an iMac G5 and I'm running iLife 08 with iMovie. I need some advice on how I might import a bunch of old Hi8 video tapes from an old video camera. The camera has S-video out as well as the analog video/audio phono jacks. I'm assuming that I need some way to mate the camera output jacks (preferably s-video?) to one of the fireware jacks on the iMac. Can someone recommend the best device to do this? I am completely new to using iMovie and importing video. I've done a lot with digital still photography via USB.
Thanks in advance,
Bill

AppleMan gave you some great advice.
I have used a similar procedure. Look at the Canopus ADVC300. Audio and Video go in, FireWire comes out. It also comes with a nice Macintosh application that works flawlessly with iMovie 06 and iDVD 08 (I have used it with iMovie 08 a few times too).
The program that comes with the ADVC300 has some nice filters that can improve video and audio of the source material. The ADVC300 will take Audio and Video from any source and convert it to FireWire (iMovie will treat it like a camera).
http://www.canopus.com/products/ADVC300/index.php
I have also found that I got better quality with iMovie 06 than iMovie 08.
iMovie 08 uses single-field processing. This means every other horizontal line of the video is thrown out, which reduces the sharpness of the footage.
If your primary workflow is editing DV clips and making DVDs, iMovie '06 is better suited. Your movie will arrive at iDVD in DV format, which is an ideal match for making a DVD: same resolution, same pixels aspect ratio, and original quality. If you share your movie from iMovie '08, it gets re-rendered at 640x480 or less, and then iDVD upscales it back to 720x480. The end result is obviously not as good.
iMovie 06 is a free download to iLife 08 owners. (THEY WANT YOU TO HAVE IT!)
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/imovieHD6.html

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