Q: I shot a video with the video camera of the iPod nano. I now want to transfer it to my Mac. In iTunes it doesn’t show, neither does it in ‘wondershare.’ The whole ‘video camera’ seems not to exist. How can I transfer this file to my Mac?
– Bertel
A: iTunes does not import photos or videos from the camera on any of the iPod or iPhone models. Instead, users are expected to use photo management software such as iPhoto or Image Capture on the Mac or the Scanner and Camera Wizard on Windows. Any application designed to import photos or videos from a digital camera should automatically recognize the iPod nano when it is connected, however since these applications simply read the DCIM camera folder from the iPod directly, you may need to enable disk use on your iPod in order for it to remain connected long enough to be “seen” by your computer.
To enable disk use on your iPod, connect it to your computer select it from the devices list in iTunes, and then look for the option on the main “Summary” tab labelled Enable disk use:
What this option effectively does is tell iTunes to leave your iPod connected after a manual sync, so that it continues to appear as an external storage device on your computer. In this mode, you should be able to see it in Finder, and other applications like iPhoto or Image Capture should recognize the “DCIM” camera storage folder on it and be able to import videos from it.
Note, however, that you can also just as easily browse into the DCIM folder in Finder and copy the movie files directly from there. They should simply appear as MP4 files.
Note that the iPhone does not use “Disk mode” in order to transfer photos or videos, so if you’re ever using one of these devices, you will simply need to use iPhoto or Image Capture to retrieve photos and videos.
