DCR-TRV520 and 525 at Sony.com. If this is the camcorder,
http://www.docs.sony.com/release/DCRTRV520.pdf
then you need to find a Digital8 tape replacement.
The varying prices you see can depend on lots of things - whether the camcorder actually works and motivation of the seller are two most common.
Assuming you locate a suitable Digital8 camcorder, you will treat that digital tape the same as you would miniDV tape when importing.
Connect a firewire cable to the camcorder's DV port and the computer's firewire port. See page 127 (item 63) for the location of the 4-pin DV port. In this context, DV, i.LINK, firewire and IEEE1394 are all the same thing.
Your MacBook Pro probably has a 9-pin firewire port, but you need to verify this. It means the difference between getting a 4-pin to 6-pin or 4-pin to 9-pin firewire cable.
If the computer is off, power it up. When at a stable desktop environment,
with the Camcorder off,
Connect camcorder to computer using the firewire cable.
Put the camcorder into "VTR" mode. This is a power-mode selection. See page 7 in the manual for "VTR" mode.
Launch iMovie
Name the project, when the iMovie widows appear, under File, select Capture or Import (it depends on the version of iMovie).
I have a broken camcorder, Sony CCD-TRV 52 NTSC, and want to convert the tapes I have onto a my computer into I-movie. How do I figure out which camcorder to buy on e-bay that would do the trick since I can't find the same one. Also, prices are so different.....does it matter?
I have an older MacBook Pro.

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