Getting old vhs stuff into FCE or iMovie

I have an older Sony mini-dv camera. Not sure if I can dump some old vhs stuff to a dv tape, then import as normal.
So, I have a vhs-to-dvd standalone machine. If I burn a dvd of the vhs copy, is there a way to turn it into DV format? I'm not worried about quality at all, so that's not an issue. Could I use Handbrake for example to rip the DVD contents to my mac...then somehow convert the video_ts folder into another format?
Any suggestions?

Hello,
If your Sony miniDV camcorder has analog video+audio input you can copy your VHS tapes to miniDV and then import the resulting tape into FCE. While this is a more labor intensive process you will get much better quality than burning your VHS to DVD and then converting the DVD to DV.
On the other hand, if you burn a DVD of your VHS video with your VHS+DVD machine you can probably convert it to DV on your Mac. Rather than Handbrake, I'd suggest MPEG Streamclip which is free and works great. (Note: if you don't already have the QuickTime MPEG2 Playback Component on your Mac, you'll need to purchase it from Apple (currently $19.99 & downloadable)).
The one thing you should be aware of, however is some of those VHS+DVD units write some code on the DVDs that makes it hard if not impossible to digitally capture the video from the DVD. Check the documentation for your VHS+DVD machine.

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Message was edited by: DJSpaceMonkey

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I have many old VHS tapes I want to finally digitize so I don't lose them.
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http://www.grassvalley.com/products/advc300
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"e.g. iMovie (provided it does not crash)? Because then I could capture the missing audio pair 2 like that in a separated manner and import it into FCE?"
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Getting old vhs stuff into FCE or iMovie

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