[ZooTV]

I've been looking for a way to input video in and out of my G3 (analog not firewire), and i've noticed two major products, the Iomega Buz, and the XLR8 InterView. Has anyone had any experience with any of these and does anyone know which would be the better choice?

Thanks,
Matt

[Simon Kornblith]

You might want to investigate PCI cards that do this. XLR8's InterView works via USB, meaning the quality will be much less than quality with a PCI card. I know that when the Blue and White G3 was first demonstrated at Macworld there was a test device that converted FireWire to RCA-style video in and out ports.

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Simon Kornblith
Computer Consultant
Programmer

[ZooTV]

I found a board that sounds fairly good, the Pinaccle Systems miroMotion DC30 plus. In the requirements though, it lists a Wide SCSI-2AV hard drive. I Have a Power Mac G3/450 with a 12GB UltraATA-33 hard drive and 256 MB RAM. Is this an OK configuration?

Since you have a B & W G3, I'd forget about the DC 30+. The DC 30+ was intended mostly for older Macs without FireWire. The DC 30+ we had was pretty fussy about the drives you put on it. There are better solutions out there now.

Buy the Sony DVMC-DA1 or -DA2 converter box. It will take composite or S-video in and turn it into firewire out. Fastware is supposed to be shipping their box sometime this month, but as of right now, it's vaporware.

If you must have higher quality than S-video, your choices will be considerably pricier -- either the Targa series from Pinnacle or the Igniter series from Aurora. Either of these cards should satisfy the most anal broadcast engineer.

[ZooTV]

Thanks for the advice. I just bought a Sony DVMC-DA2 for $385 ($545 retail) and it sounds like the perfect solution for my question. Would I need to use Final Cut or iMove to get this from the converter to a file on my hard drive?