I have a Power Mac 9500 180MP with 300 meg RAM, a 7500 speed 6Gig HD and a Canon Optura DV camcorder. I need to be able to ; capture, edit and output to Video Tape (VHS) short Orientation Videos.
I was thinking of getting:
- a G4 400 upgrade card
- a Firewire PCI card
- Adobe Premire 5.1
- ProFormance 3 accelerator Card
- ???? - not sure how to get it out to the VCR ( will sending it back through the camera achieve decent results or is there a better option)

or getting:
- a G4 400 upgrade card
- MiroMotion DC30 Plus video capture and editing board (comes with Premire 5.1)
- ProFormance 3 accelerator Card

or is there a better option
I need to keep the expense to around $1500.00

I would appreciate any and all suggestions.
Thanks,
Ken

[reader50]

Get a Firewire card. Here is one. They cost $99, or less from a mail order house. Then get the free iMovie download here. It is about 19 megs, and has been reported to work on many older systems that are slower than yours.

Output back to the Canon is digital, with no image quality loss. Use the Canon's video out afterwards to transfer to VHS.

Check the MacNN DV Forum for tips on getting iMovie to work on your system if you have any problems. Just search for "iMovie". If this low-cost combination works for you, pocket the rest of the money and save up for a new G4 in the future, perhaps even a new G4e MP.

If you cannot get it to work for you, you can still get the other upgrades and you will not have wasted any money.

Good luck.

[Feathers]

Check out www.ratoc.com/ you get firewire AND usb on one card.

You'll need a FAR bigger hard-drive somewhere between 20 and 40 partitioned into tens for quick and easy defrag. I wont get into any argument over drives here, just bigger and faster, 7200rpm geddit?

YES to Premier.

The Proformance will have no effect on rendering of the DV so why exactly do you want it? Although it is a great display card.

For VHS you can work at way sub-768x576 (or whatever NTSC is) rez. VHS rez is about 240 horizontal so you could actually happily work at 384x288 for speed and space.

I'm not exactly a MIRO fan....but getting FULL Premier bundled is good, you should always watch out for deals like that, so long as it's not the LE version.

Thanks,
I am conserned about dropping out frames in exporting to the VCR ( via S Video) with the "Miro" card. I have been told that it is processor and bus speed dependant. But the only other way I know of to get it to VHS (via Firewire) is back through the camera and out to a VCR (via S Video) and I am concerned about loss of quality in the extra step.
What is the best route to VHS given my slower settup.
Thanks for the advice about the Proformance card and the resolution

[Feathers]

Scrubbing back out to DV via firewire provides near broadcast quality. Then copying from DV to VHS (especially via s-video) will provide superb quality VHS. Don't think of the transfer from the computer back out to the camera as a generational loss, it isn't.

feathers is correct. there is no generational loss in dv. all transfers over firewire are without loss of quality. the fastest and easiest way to vhs from your mac would be to get a tv converter box, which you would connect to your vcr. however, this would produce EXTREMELY crappy results. the best way would be to copy the movie back to the dv camera and connect it to the vcr.

dabradda

ah, yes, i forgot to address the hard drive space. exactly how long are these videos you plan to make? digital video is about 216MB per minute, which makes out to about 12 gigs an hour. so, assuming you have half of your hard drive empty, you can make a max. 10 minute video.

dabradda