John Paines wrote:And do you know for a fact that "sudo apt install dvgrab" is going to successfully download the files on a late model imac,with its proprietary adapters for firewire?
No, I know for certain it will not.
You can only do this on a PC running Linux, and (for the command I posted) something running Debian or Ubuntu.
You cannot capture with Firewire at all on any version of Windows newer than XP (and that is extremely flaky) and I don't believe you can capture from Firewire on any recent version of Mac OSX either. The newest Mac to even have Firewire was released in 2011, so it's a fair bet that you're going to struggle with newer ones. Macs are great at what they do, but they don't do much.
Edit: just to be clear, if you're capturing in 200 tapes, you'd be better off building an actual dedicated DV-capturing machine running reliable software with a lot of disk space. An iMac doesn't really fit that bill, but an oldish Core i5 with a few simple tools would be ideal. As for space, 200 tapes is only about 2.5TB, so a couple of cheap 4TB drives configured as RAID would be rock solid reliable for keeping it on.
You're going to be sitting in front of this PC a *lot*. Don't make it any more painful than it has to be.