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insomnia169 · Jul 22, 2003, 04:58 PM

Okay, I am posting for some advice on converting analog video to digital. I would like to convert some analog video to iMovie edit alitte etc... and put it to analog again for family and friends.

I want to do this the most economical way possible but still have good quality product.

What I have.

ibook (ice) -- 500mhz
iMovie etc...

What I need advice on.

1) what converter should I get? I have been thinking about the Fast Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge.

2) Need extra hard drive. What size should I get? I guess what I am asking is in importing raw video how much drive space should I plan for? and also have enough for editing.

3) a firwire spliter. To have the firewire convertor and the extra hard drive on one firewire port.

4) Because I do not have the tapes with me. I was planning on going to the family member's house to import the raw footage. How long would that take?

And anything eles people could help me with would be great.

Thanks

insomnia169

Weezer · Jul 22, 2003, 05:31 PM

Im a big fan of buying a minDV cam with passthrough, instead of buying a box mearly to convert the footage. If you are gonna spend $200 for a box you will only use a few times, or you could spend $100-200 more and get a DV camera, it makes much more fiscal sense in my mind to go with the camera. In terms of harddrives, just look around for some deals. You can commonly get a WD or a Maxtor drive for $1 a gig or less if you look hard enough (usually includes a mail in rebate). I would go for an 80 gig drive, with an 8 meg cache. As far as encoding, it does it in real time, so it will take as long as all of your footage is. Also, your ibook will do the editing decently, but it will take awhile to render each of the transitions and whatnot. goodluck

Uncle Skeleton · Jul 22, 2003, 06:03 PM

I don't think such thing as a firewire splitter exists, but you don't need one since most firewire drives have two ports, you plug one into the computer and one into the camera/converter. I captured video with a Dazzle and my sister's icebook (500mhz I think) once and it came through fine

insomnia169 · Jul 22, 2003, 06:35 PM

Originally posted by Weezer:
Im a big fan of buying a minDV cam with passthrough, instead of buying a box mearly to convert the footage. If you are gonna spend $200 for a box you will only use a few times, or you could spend $100-200 more and get a DV camera, it makes much more fiscal sense in my mind to go with the camera. In terms of harddrives, just look around for some deals. You can commonly get a WD or a Maxtor drive for $1 a gig or less if you look hard enough (usually includes a mail in rebate). I would go for an 80 gig drive, with an 8 meg cache. As far as encoding, it does it in real time, so it will take as long as all of your footage is. Also, your ibook will do the editing decently, but it will take awhile to render each of the transitions and whatnot. goodluck

Mini DV cam. I never thought of that. Good alternative. Would I need other software to bring in the raw video or would iMovie be able to handlie it? any tricks to it?

I knew that rendering would be slow but that is what I have to deal with for now. No cash for what I really want.

insomnia169 · Jul 22, 2003, 06:38 PM

Originally posted by Uncle Skeleton:
I don't think such thing as a firewire splitter exists, but you don't need one since most firewire drives have two ports, you plug one into the computer and one into the camera/converter. I captured video with a Dazzle and my sister's icebook (500mhz I think) once and it came through fine

Firewire spliters (hubs) do exits, but I forgot that most external HDs have 2 ports. Thanks for the reminder. Good to hear that Dazzle truely works with my system. Thanks again.

Weezer · Jul 22, 2003, 07:13 PM

nope, you just need to make sure you buy a DV cam with passthrough. You plug your analog source into the camera, plug the firewire out into your mac, set the DV cam to passthrough mode, play your analog source, and it decods it into DV on the fly.

wilsonX · Jul 23, 2003, 09:18 AM

Originally posted by Weezer:
nope, you just need to make sure you buy a DV cam with passthrough. You plug your analog source into the camera, plug the firewire out into your mac, set the DV cam to passthrough mode, play your analog source, and it decods it into DV on the fly.

An ever cheaper alternative could be getting a sony digital 8 camera for this exact same purpose. This is what I used when I started out in video editing. The digital 8 format also allows you to convert Hi-8 and regular 8 cassettes to digital. No extra software or hookups, and the digital 8 tapes are cheaper.