Special situations investing pdf books. If you have a digital video camera, most support pass-through mode. This allows you to use the camera as your converter, both in and out.If you're into spending money, which it seems like you might be, consider this route (unless you need really highend stuff). It works, plus, you get the camera with it. You need to consider how often you will need the converter.if it isn't really that often, maybe a digital video camera is more economical in the long run.If I had known this when I bought my $400 Formac DV converter 2 years ago, I would have spent the money on a DV cam instead.Hope that helps.Later,Eddie.

Hollywood DV-Bridge, a breakthrough DV editing solution that puts an end to the creativity limitations caused by analog/DV video incompatibility. Hollywood DV-Bridge enables Macintosh and PC users to capture older analog video content, mix it with new DV video content, edit it and output it in either the DV or analog format.

Once again, sorry if this is an old question, but Search is still down, & spot-checking the archives hasn't helped.I have a new PowerMac, and a bunch of videotapes. I want to digitise all this content to preserve it; I'd also like to convert it to MPEG 1/2 (preferably as one step in the archiving process).What I can't seem to find are low-, mid- & high-end battle plans, and an accurate look at what hardware serves each plan AND works (relatively) seamlessly w/ the Mac.I don't especially care about watching TV on my Mac (since I can see the TV just fine from here), but cards made for wintel (but Mac-functional) would be welcome additions.PCI, Firewire, USB (in order of preference)Thanks for any & all input! Quote:Originally posted by MilanKraft:The Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge (external Firewire device with analog inputs) is Mac compatible and works directly with iMovie and your VCR/camera to get the analog footage digitized.

No drivers or special software required.But it's a pain in the ass to get it to work. IMovie really want's to work it like a DVCam, pressing stop on the VCR freaks out iMovie, it thinks that the cam has been disconnected, it then resets the input mode on the DV bridge (to the default of firewire to firewire?), which is controled by a tiny button on the back of the thing.If you want one of these things look for one on ebay, most people seam to use it for a single project, then never need it again or just get flustrated, and sell the thing. Quote:Originally posted by MilanKraft:The Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge (external Firewire device with analog inputs) is Mac compatible and works directly with iMovie. No drivers or special software required.Preliminary research suggests that this item imports as DV only, and does not offer a 'capture to compressed format' option.

I have heard (but do not know from my own experience) that iMovie cannot export to MPEG2 (and perhaps not to MPEG1?), thereby requiring additional cumbersome steps. Can you (or anyone) verify or refute this? Quote:Originally posted by zatoichi:Preliminary research suggests that this item imports as DV only, and does not offer a 'capture to compressed format' option.

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I have heard (but do not know from my own experience) that iMovie cannot export to MPEG2 (and perhaps not to MPEG1?), thereby requiring additional cumbersome steps. Can you (or anyone) verify or refute this?iMovie 3 can export a movie to the following: AVI, DV, MPEG-4, any Quicktime Codec format, as well as image sequences, etc.What are you ultimataely trying to make out these? Perhaps the would do the trick if it's Mac compatible.quote:The Dazzle DVD Creation Station 200 (DCS 200) is the ultimate solution for creating videos and photo slideshows for your DVD player. The DCS 200 combines the ability to capture video from any camcorder, VCR or TV with the ability to read photos, video or audio files from all current flash card media. The DCS 200 hardware converts your video into DVD quality MPEG-2 video in real-time so there is no need to go back and convert the video later. I think you're going to have to go with a DV bridge solution, like everybody else has suggested in here.

I've heard good things about the latest DV bridges from.All of them support MacOS, but i didn't look at which ones were OS X compatible. The firewire ones i'm sure would work fine in OS X, but there's a PCI card that might have OS9 only drivers. Check it out. A couple of them support locked audio, which is key for capturing long analogue clips and maintaining sync in the audio and video. Some have outputs too, which is always a nice perk.

The one that I was thinking about getting has all the nice features, for around $250. The somewhat crippled PCI card can be had for even cheaper.As for compression, you're probably going to have to go with QT Pro, like the masked unit suggests. If you have Toast, there's a Toast VCD export component for iMovie that lets you export straight to Toast's VCD format, which might work out well for you.Let us know what you decide on, and how it works out!-Short Bus DriverEDIT: Blah, i looked at Canopus's site again, and realized i provided a bit of mis-information. There's 2 (external) DV bridges, the one that does all the nice outputs and locked audio is $300, and the professional one is probably out of the price range (and completely not needed.) The PCI cards claim to work with iMovie and Final Cut Pro, they fit in a PCI slot, but capture as a DV device, not a 'capture card'. I think.Also, i noticed the masked unti suggested Sorenson, which would be expensive if you actually bought the full CODEC. If you're not opposed to not using a flavor of MPEG, then take a look at On2's VP3 CODEC. There's a PC and Mac version of the CODEC, the quality is nice, and it double or triple sizes without looking like ass.

It's free too.This message was edited by Short Bus Driver on February 15, 2003 at 15:35. There are several freeware alternatives for encoding to MPEG2 on the Mac. AFAIK, they are still somewhat 'immateur,' but coming along nicely. Search at verstiontracker for MPEG and you should find most of them. I haven't really had time to try them yet, but I hear good things about ffmpegx.

If you want to do MPEG2 on the Mac, unless you're buying DVD Studio Pro, or perhaps Cleaner??, these are your only option.It has to do with licensing of the MPEG2 codec, but I'm not sure why there are so many inexpensive options for the PC and so few for the Mac.jespring. Well, it certainly seems that everyone's right on this one. The limiting factor seems to be software: the units that offer 'in-line' hardware encoding apparently only do so because the units come w/ (Windows-only) software that enables the feature. Since Macs come w/ iMovie on board, no Mac s/w is bundled, so there's nothing to do the enabling when a Mac is driving the converter.Soooo, there's boxes from Dazzle, Formac & Canopus ranging from $300 - $400, and cards from Canopus @ $200 - $250.For those who are interested:Canopus ADVC-50 - PCI Card - $200Canopus ADVC-1394 - PCI Card - $250Dazzle Hollywood DV - Standalone 1394 box - $300Canopus ADVC-100 - Standalone 1394 box - $300Formac Studio DV - Standalone 1394 box - $300Formac Studio DV/TV - Standalone 1394 box - $400Can anyone expand/extend this list?

Perhaps add this interesting box to that list:It's not a DV bridge, instead it uses uncompressed Component yuv2 4:2:2 to capture video. I haven't seen or used this device, but the person who wrote the OSX driver is a regular on the QuickTime list and really knows his stuff.

It's a much higher bandwidth data stream than DV (17 vs 3.5MB/sec) so you might need a fast disk to capture at 30fps. The captured footage will have more color data than DV and be better suited for compressing into MPEG2 or the like. It doesn't do audio but BTV or any other VDIG based capture app should handle that.gcc. Quote:Originally posted by brett d:hey, the mac community might not be 'oh-so-savvy' (did we say we were?), but at least we're not insert your own.No worries, brettd!

I was just surprised & frustrated at how difficult I found it to dig up info on my own, and discouraged at the direction my search was taking (ie, somewhat-pricey low-end solutions).No insult to the community - especially here in the Mac Ach! - was intended! And, for the record, I say we're 'oh, so savvy'. View image here: -PS to Robert Jung: couldn't find links to your Sony box, so didn't add it to the list. If you have one, bring it on! Good catch on the ADS Instant DVD for Mac, pazuzu!

It seems to have the exact capabilities I was looking for. USB raises some concern, but apparently the real-time MPEG transcoding shrinks the output stream sufficiently for USB transfer rates.

I was looking for much the same thing. I have some VHS tapes that I would like to remove the commercials from and save them as MPEGs (or something) on DVD discs. I was also looking for something to be able to record directly with.I bought the ADS Instant DVD for Mac. The hardware seems to work well enough.

The USB manages to grab all of the data without any problem. The software however is probably has the ugliest interface I have ever seen on the Mac. If you go to the review posted above look at some of the screen shots.

Most of them don't look too bad, but you don't realize that they cover the entire screen. The first four screen shots in the review are full screen. If you squint at the second and fourth ones you can see a little menu bar at the top of the screen, minus the apple and other things that you are used to seeing. If you use command-tab to change to another application, (there is no other way to do this) when you come back the normal Apple menu bar covers up this one and your only recourse is to quit the application and open it again and never switch to anything else.It did crash on me a couple of times but it does seem to actually import the video as MPEG2 okay.

The software is just so klunky that I have never gotten around to actually trying to finish anything in it.Then I panicked and bought the Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge. Its hardware works great and since it actually doesn't include any software, you just use whatever can import video from a video camera using fireware. I was using iMovie 2 at the time. The importing was easy and editing was easy to understand and then you use iDVD to write your DVD and you end up with 90 minutes of video. Which is not efficent enough for me.I have tried to edit the DV stream in iMovie and then save that as some form of compressed video.

So far I have not found anything that I really like.At the moment I am trying to either find a format that iMovie can export into that is small and at least the quality of VHS and doesn't take forever to render. Or something that can convert DV to MPEG2. The MPEG2 that the Instant DVD converts to is compressed enough and high enough quality, but I haven't found anything to edit it with other than the software that it came with.

You can buy a codec from apple that lets quicktime understand it but it will just play it, you cannot edit it or save it. I haven't played with it that much, but BTV (a small app for adquiring video from any standard Quicktime-compatible device) seems to be able to transcode on the fly from DV to whatever. In fact, it seems this feature is not BTV's but Quicktime's (you can set a target codec and test the results in the standard video input dialog, at least in OS X).If so, given a fast enough machine, you could directly produce a smaller data rate file than DV. BTV resizes on the fly, too, and you can preset some typical sizes for, say, VideoCD and SVCD. The idea of a DV bridge for capturing video has been of great interest to me, but I've been starting to wonder. I've heard that some video cameras can function as a DV bridge and may actually have better capture quality.

Now I know there's a difference between a $1000 DV video camera and a $400 bridge only device, but might it be worth it to purchase a piece of hardware that can not only convert your old memories but makes sure the new ones your create are ready to be archieved?This being said, I have never found of the optimum camera for such purposes and haven't experimented with it. Are there cameras that serve this purpose? I bring it up since, well, yea. I'm curious, but someone who is considering investing that much in a DV capture device just might want to drop the extra cash for the added functionality.Just a thought. View image here: - My apologies if it wonders from topic.

Quote:Originally posted by juanxer:I haven't played with it that much, but BTV (a small app for adquiring video from any standard Quicktime-compatible device) seems to be able to transcode on the fly from DV to whatever.Looking at BTV's more.info pages, it seems that there are frame-drop issues w/ the shareware version ($20), and the 'Pro' ($40) version needs OS X drivers.and NONE of the devices we've turned up so far (except for the ADS InstantDVD) has any kind of device-specific driver. (Kinda makes me wonder what's the point.)Neither page says anything about transcoding / conversion, btw. Quote:Originally posted by Caravaggio:The idea of a DV bridge for capturing video has been of great interest to me, but I've been starting to wonder. I've heard that some video cameras can function as a DV bridge and may actually have better capture quality.

Now I know there's a difference between a $1000 DV video camera and a $400 bridge only device, but might it be worth it to purchase a piece of hardware that can not only convert your old memories but makes sure the new ones your create are ready to be archieved?I know from experience that nothing on the low end of DV stuff (read less than 3k$) will let you do this without recording whatever source it is onto a dv tape first. You can't just 'play through' PITA. I have a sony tr900 (2k$ when I bought it) and thats the story. Maybe its a sony thing but I think its across the board.

Quote:Originally posted by p sturges:quote:Originally posted by Caravaggio:The idea of a DV bridge for capturing video has been of great interest to me, but I've been starting to wonder. I've heard that some video cameras can function as a DV bridge and may actually have better capture quality.Might it be worth it to purchase a piece of hardware that can not only convert your old memories but makes sure the new ones your create are ready to be archieved?I know from experience that nothing on the low end of DV stuff (read less than 3k$) will let you do this without recording whatever source it is onto a dv tape first.

You can't just 'play through' PITA. I have a sony tr900 (2k$ when I bought it) and thats the story.

Maybe its a sony thing but I think its across the board.p sturges, your experience backs up my suspicion: sometimes it's better to have dedicated tools for specific purposes. Multi-tasking is fine, but as Rachel says, 'theory & practice are the same in theory, but different in practice'.Would have said as much last night, but I barely stayed awake long enough to finish my last post! - View image here: -This is great: we're building up a nice little repository of wise info on the subject - thanks once again to everyone who's pitching in! Quote:Originally posted by zatoichi:quote:Originally posted by juanxer:I haven't played with it that much, but BTV (a small app for adquiring video from any standard Quicktime-compatible device) seems to be able to transcode on the fly from DV to whatever.Looking at BTV's more.info pages, it seems that there are frame-drop issues w/ the shareware version ($20), and the 'Pro' ($40) version needs OS X drivers.and NONE of the devices we've turned up so far (except for the ADS InstantDVD) has any kind of device-specific driver. (Kinda makes me wonder what's the point.)Are you sure about that OS X drivers bit?

If anything it should be related to non-Quicktime standardized thingies. I remember playing with the Pro version for Mac OS 9 and it only added a few interesting features that seemed no special device dependent. I own a legal copy of the non-Pro version and DV Bridge and everything seems to work OK, although I must check this frame drop issue (I have just emptied a 40 Gig partition to play with it ) - View image here. Quote:When FCP captures it is it as a DV codec video or is it something else?The times I've used it, my target has been Quicktime clips, so that's all I can remember looking at.However, the import process is identical to using native DV on the same equipment (only without the device control).I can only guess, like I said before, that Sony were targeting people who own analogue versions of the same type of camcorder. The DV bridge provides backwards compatibility, and I'd guess it's used in the digital conversion process when the camera is recording.The quality, converting from a VHS tape, is good enough that you only see the limitations of VHS.

I haven't tried with a higher quality source, but would imagine that it isn't a professional solution comparable to a dedicated input card. Perhaps that's why they left it off the high-end stuff?