video capture via firewire?

Hi all,

Hoping to hear from the voice of experience on this one; I am a
longtime mac user, and am developing some web content that necessitates
a video input on one of more of my macs (i have a windtunnel G4 and a
mini, both with firewire). There are many hardware solutions, video
capture boxes, but I have no idea about any of them.

I want to be able to feed a video signal out (via standard RCA cables)
of one device (vcr, video game console, whatever the case may be) into
an appropriate IN port on a mac. I am a hobbyist and don't have a lot
to spend.

Can anyone recommend an affordable piece of hardware that is properly
supported on OS X?

thanks in advance,

Chris

In article <1166591797.326622.297280@80g2000cwy.googlegroups.c om>,
"cjv1212" <cvandergaag@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Hoping to hear from the voice of experience on this one; I am a
> longtime mac user, and am developing some web content that necessitates
> a video input on one of more of my macs (i have a windtunnel G4 and a
> mini, both with firewire). There are many hardware solutions, video
> capture boxes, but I have no idea about any of them.
>
> I want to be able to feed a video signal out (via standard RCA cables)
> of one device (vcr, video game console, whatever the case may be) into
> an appropriate IN port on a mac. I am a hobbyist and don't have a lot
> to spend.
>
> Can anyone recommend an affordable piece of hardware that is properly
> supported on OS X?
>
> thanks in advance,
>
> Chris

Look at eyeTV which has both RCA and S-Video inputs and connects via
Firewire to the Mac and works very well under OS X.

cjv1212 <cvandergaag@gmail.com> wrote:

: I want to be able to feed a video signal out (via standard RCA cables)
: of one device (vcr, video game console, whatever the case may be) into
: an appropriate IN port on a mac. I am a hobbyist and don't have a lot
: to spend.

: Can anyone recommend an affordable piece of hardware that is properly
: supported on OS X?


Well, I've used the ADS Pyro A/V Link for a while and it works pretty good.
It'll take rca or svideo and put it on the firewire. Ones on ebay seem to go
for under $100 now.

One comment though, the "supported under OSX" is somewhat meaningless. The
major headache is with software. There is some freebie stuff like GCam and
some expensive stuff like FCP which either will "capture video", but as they
say "your milage will vary".

Keeping the audio (if there is any) in sync with the picture is the biggest
headache, especially from sources like vhs tape. If these are just short
clips, there probably is no concern though.

Also keep in mind it's a steep learning curve for editing after the capture.
Whatever software you used to capture wrote it into a file that could be
anything from dv video to a compressed format like xvid or divx. Even if you
want to do something simple like a fade-in or fade-out of the clip, it could
be quite challenging.

Just trying to point out the capture hardware is barely half the problem.
everything from the speed of the Mac (how busy the firewire bus is to hard
drive speed, cpu) to editing software will influence the outcome.

-bruce
bje@ripco.com