Originally posted by phobic:
Alrighty, I Just purchased a video That was taken out of production back in 94' and would like to back it up to some sort of Digital format so It will last forever.
Right now I have a rev A. iBook 300/160/6gig. which I was thinking of upgrading to a new 800mhz iBook, but was told there is now way hook up an external DVD burner to it
the rev A ibook has only USB and ethernet connectivity, yes? You can get a USB video capture card. I got one called the Belkin VideoBus, and there's also one called InterView that appears to be the same hardware, but they make their own software for it. It's max res is 320x240, and even then I never got very good quality with it. Captured video cannot be compressed (especially with your ancient proc). Actually that's not quite true; I recently saw a product that compressed to mpeg-2 in hardware and sent that through USB at full res, but while that's technically within the spec of USB, it's not a very good idea; USB was really designed with input devices in mind, not mass data transfer.
So. I guess you have about 2 gigs free on your drive at any one time, you'll be able to have about 10 minutes of video on there at a time. you could compress that and archive it somehow and move on, but that sucks. Also, capturing video is rough on a hard disk, and laptop HD's are especially fragile. You really want to get yourself a firewire disk to capture on (you also don't want to be capturing to you startup volume if you can avoid it, or to the last gig or so of the drive in any case). If you upgrade your 'book you'll have firewire options, which include hard drives and better capture cards. What I use now is the Dazzle Hollywood whatever ($229 at buy.com). the quality is much much better than the belkin one. I've also tried daisy-chaining the dazzle through my firewire disk (actually, it was because I was using my sister's 500mhz ibook that had only one firewire port), and it worked just fine.
The reason you can't get an external DVD-burner is because iDVD only recognizes internal ones. There are other options (assuming you upgrade to a firewire ibook and a firewire drive) like DVDStuido Pro ($999) or Sizzle (free, open source, just released), and your drive might come with it's own software.
is there a way to hook up a VCR to the iBook and capture the video. If so What format if not DVD. Next question I was looking into buying a new dvd player (right now I use my PS2 and it wont play burnt DVD) maybe a Home-threater-in-a-box like the panasonic models, and was woundering if there are any DVD players that will play a format that I can burn with the iBook.
The options are VCD (320x240 res, mpeg-1 format, 74 minutes), SVCD (480x480, mpeg-2 format, about 20 minutes), and DVD (720x480, mpeg-2, 90 minutes with iDVD, up to about 4 hours with others). DVD is the best option, because it's the actual standard and you'll get better quality and a whole movie on one disc. But you'll need the burner. VCD is easier (with Toast) and supported by more players than SVCD, but you'll have to check before you buy. SVCD is kind of a compromise between the quality of DVD and the cheap/easy of VCD, but it's kind of the worst of both worlds. And there's no easy software for it like Toast.
I have a friend that has an iMac with Superdrive and was thinking if i can capture the video, edit, and do whaterever else then maybe I can just bring my iBook to his house, network them together and burn it on his mac.
I like this solution the best. But you'll still want to get a firewire mac/drive. Then you can capture with better quality and less risk of destroying your disk, and you can just bring the firewire disk to your friend's house and burn directly from it (actually, iDVD will create it's own internal intermediate mpeg-2 files on the iMac's drive somewhere, but this will still be much much faster than ethernet)
last question, What software would I need. will I be able to it all with the iApps. Sorry for all the questions.
thank you
- Matt
you can capture with iMovie. I prefer BTV ($20), because it's scriptable, and also iMovie splits the captured files into about 10 minute blocks, and in the breaks there's a little skip. it's only noticable during dialog, but it's a pain to go back and re-capture those little bits and edit them in. iDVD can burn, but only to internal drives. I haven't used this Sizzle thing, but the author is very responsive.
and buying a superdrive Powerbook is way out of my price range. Is there a way to hook up a VCR to the iBook and capture the video. If so What format if not DVD. Next question I was looking into buying a new dvd player (right now I use my PS2 and it wont play burnt DVD) maybe a Home-threater-in-a-box like the panasonic models, and was woundering if there are any DVD players that will play a format that I can burn with the iBook.
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