Hey everyone,

I'd been crying in my beer this past week trying to figure out how the heck to get audio recorded on my MiniDisc onto my Mac hard drive to insert into FCP. The new Macs don't have "audio in" jacks for some reason.

Then our resident genius, Adrian Douglas, stepped up to the plate and saved the day. He suggested I plug one end of the cable into the "audio out" jack on the MiniDisc, then plug the other into the little mic jack on my XL-1 and simply record with blank video. Dang. I hate it when he's brilliant. ;)

Anyway...not sure if this should go in this forum...since I'm basically unfamiliar with cameras other than the XL-1 and Mac computers...but I wanted to post it here just in case other cameras/computers might benefit from this info. If it only applies to Macs and/or XL-1s...please move it.

I don't see why this would'd work...
Two remarks however
- There can be a "level" problem: yr minidisc can output "line level", while yr mike input maybe needs a much lower (mike) level. Maybe (adjustable) earphone output will then do the job.
- Jack compatibility:Yr XL-1 has maybe a mono mike input...

dre...,

You're right...the level was a bit high...but it was easy enough to filter down to normal levels. Regardless, it worked fine. The audio from my MiniDisc is now snuggled safely in a sequence in FCP.

If the levels are too high, switch the input switch from Mic to ATT. This should cut about drops the gain by about 20db. The standard mic on the XL1 is stereo so everything is sweet, stereo out from the MD and stereo into the camera.

It's all good.

The aardvark Direct Pro USB3 is a good solution too.

See:

http://www.aardvark-pro.com/direct_pro_usb3.html

There's something strange about the photo of the Direct Pro. If you look at the back panel showing the input jacks, one is labeled "USB" that clearly isn't USB. It looks like a modem jack.

Does it require some sort of special adapter cord that only they make?

i burn MD audio straight to tascam cd recorder then import the audio from the cd into G4. plus this will give you a cd backup of the audio.

I ca't see this on the picture, but a USB "B" version often used on the driving equip parts resemble a (smaller)network connection.

USB connections come in several sizes. The aardvark unit uses the smaller "square" connector out (actually the top corners are cut-off). My Portadisc minidisc deck that has USB-out built in uses this kind of connector, as does my HP inkjet printer. There are standard cables that go from the small "square" connector to the "flat" computer style.

After I posted my note I realized that this would not be a digital-digital connection -- the aardvark is an analog to digital converter, but then the line out on the minidisc recorder mentioned is analog right?

I think the aardvark gives good flexibility for the price.