[Swampthing]

I've seen a couple of solutions out there to allow you to connect a video device (cable, satellite, s-video, etc) to an iMac and store the input as a QT file. I'm interested in doing this with some television shows for storage on VCD or DVD. Ideally, this item should allow me to change the bit rate for capture to reduce the file size - if necessary.

Does anyone out there have any experience with these solutions? I've seen the iRez, MyTV, Formac, and Director's Cut "Take 2" units (links below.) Are there others? Any better solutions?? Would either of these allow me to retain the digital signal quality output of my satellite, or will it transfer to analog and back? Since my satellite allows the output of component video and digital audio via TOSLink, would any of these solutions (or perhaps a better one?) take the same feed? Or am I restricted to S-Video input?

http://www.synchrotech.com/product-usb/video_02.html
http://www.synchrotech.com/product-usb/video_05.html
http://www.formac.com/html/shopforma...roducts_studio
http://www.miglia.com/products/video...or2/index.html

[ 03-18-2002: Message edited by: Swampthing ]

[titanX]

I would definitely advise you to stand away from any USB product to import TV into quicktime movies... USB is really too slow for that purpose and these products give very poor results.

If you already have a TV tuner such as a VCR, one of the best / not-too-expensive solution is the Hollywood Dazzle DV Bridge, which converts any analog source into DV (and vice-versa by the way). That means that you could use iMovie or QT Pro to convert your TV shows into QT movies or VCDs. These programs allow you of course to choose the codec, bit rate and size of your movies. If you have a Superdrive, you could even put them to DVD via iDVD with very high quality.

I'm using the Hollywood DV Bridge for a year with my G4 Cube/450 and results are very good (I should aldo say that my imput is digital cable TV). But even imports from VHS are pretty good. It allows me also to watch TV on my Cube in full screen mode with shareware apps like BTV (though it's processor consuming).

If you don't have a VCR or you want real TV functionalities on your iMac, I've heard good reviews of the Formac Studio, which is quite more expensive than the Hollywood Bridge, but gives more TV functions (tuner, software...)

[ 03-18-2002: Message edited by: titanX ]

[ 03-18-2002: Message edited by: titanX ]

[SpeedRacer]

The topic being phrased as a question as to whether the new superdrive iMac is the best TV import solution, i'll just throw in my $.02 and say "no."

The best TV import solution utilizes online show scheduling and hardware encoding of the video to a compressed format. Currently, such features are available only to the Wintel world through video cards/kits like the Radeon 8500 AIW or nVidia Personal Cinema or Sony's out-of-the-box recording/burning VIAO MX series. Before splurging on a new iMac with considerably less capabilities (even if a much cooler design) you should check out the 8500, PC, or MX series for comparison's sake. The features are enough to make any Mac user druel.

Speed

[rcfuzz]

Originally posted by Swampthing:
<STRONG>I've seen a couple of solutions out there to allow you to connect a video device (cable, satellite, s-video, etc) to an iMac and store the input as a QT file. I'm interested in doing this with some television shows for storage on VCD or DVD. Ideally, this item should allow me to change the bit rate for capture to reduce the file size - if necessary. </STRONG>

I have had great success taking the S-Video out from my DirecTV Tivo Receiver and recording on to DV (in this case using my Sony Digital8 camcorder) and then importing it into iMovie2 for editing. The quality is excellent.

For a good example you can go to http://homepage.mac.com/rcfuzz/iMovieTheater5.html and see the 3 minute music video I made as a tribute to the 9/11. The video was edited from the 2 hour CBS 9/11 special. The web video was reduced to 240x180 using Sorrenson3 codec.

Whether you go Mac or PC your best bet for transfering your satellite picture into DV is to use a DV camcorder. More bang for the buck. Just my 2 cents.

Bob
NJ

[Swampthing]

Still looking for opinions here. I probably would like something with a tuner, and figure if I'm gonna shell out $300 for the Hollywood DV Bridge, why not shell out $99 bucks more and get the top of the line Formac studio? I understand the quality difference would be well worth it plus I'd get a tuner.

About getting a new G4 800MHz iMac for the job... well, I already have had one since 21 February 2002, so I want to use what I have on hand. The stand alone units seem to make the most sense to me at the moment.

RCFUZZ: That was a fantastic video, great job!!! I particularly liked the ending with the reverse of the crash and sparkle tied with the cymbals in the song...

[buchrob]

Originally posted by Swampthing:
<STRONG>Still looking for opinions here. I probably would like something with a tuner, and figure if I'm gonna shell out $300 for the Hollywood DV Bridge, why not shell out $99 bucks more and get the top of the line Formac studio? I understand the quality difference would be well worth it plus I'd get a tuner.

About getting a new G4 800MHz iMac for the job... well, I already have had one since 21 February 2002, so I want to use what I have on hand. The stand alone units seem to make the most sense to me at the moment.

RCFUZZ: That was a fantastic video, great job!!! I particularly liked the ending with the reverse of the crash and sparkle tied with the cymbals in the song...</STRONG>

You can use a Hollywood DV Bridge and iMovie to record programs from your cable box or satellite receiver as the "poor man's" solution. You will, however, quickly fill up your hard drive. TIVO and other consumer solutions compress to MPEG on the fly to save on hard drive space and offer an integrated timer/tuner solution. You will have to manually set up your mac and external tuner or write Applescripts to start and stop iMovie. You will also be importing just 1 giant clip, which is not the most convenient for editing.

That having been said, you can actually do some very nifty things (c.f. rcfuzz) if you want to take the trouble to edit.

[joe]

Originally posted by rcfuzz:
<STRONG>I have had great success taking the S-Video out from my DirecTV Tivo Receiver and recording on to DV (in this case using my Sony Digital8 camcorder) and then importing it into iMovie2 for editing. The quality is excellent.</STRONG>

I do something similar with my DirecTV and Formac Studio. I previously ran S-video only from DSS to S-VHS deck to 35" Sony. But even with the very highest quality S-VHS tape running at high speed, you can NEVER record off the dish as good as you see it. But since I added the Formac studio to the setup (between S-VHS and Sony TV) the video is EXCELLENT! The Studio has S-Video in/out along with normal audio video i/o ports. The beta OSX software (Tevion) is nice - especially the live video in the dock feature. It's lacking some of the OS9 software (ProTV) features though.

But you don't even have to use the Formac software! iMovie recognizes the Formac as a camera. So whatever I'm watching on the dish shows up in iMovie live - and you can pause, record etc. Then edit it down to VCD. If I had a SuperDrive, I might keep it at the full DV res. Firewire rulz!.......joe

[SpeedRacer]

Well since this topic rests squarely in MacWorld, i'll just point on that there is a guy over at the BTV forums that suggested using BTV's automatic scene detection features in combination with a standard VCR's on/off scheduling to simulate pseudo-TiVo functionality on the Mac. IOW: Hook up your VCR out to Mac, set your VCR for automatic timer recording, shut it off, and let BTV on your Mac sit and wait for the VCR to turn on, send the signal to your Mac and then end the video import as soon as the VCR turns itself off again at the end of the program. Not exactly the simplest setup, but it does allow somewhat automated digital import using conventional analog timer functionality.

Question for Joe...

Does your mention of the Formac Tevion software indicate that this software can be used on the $400 Formac Studio as well as the absurdly-priced $999 model? From the way it is promoted on their site, i was under the impression that only the higher-end model could utilize this new software.

Speed

[compnow_alex]

Hi,

So am I right in thinking there are no digital VCR options for Macintosh?

I have a client looking for a solution that will allow them to record TV using a timer.

At the moment it looks like I am going to have to sell them a PC!!!

aaarrrrggghhhH!!!

I really dont want to do that.

There must be something out for Macintosh surely!

Any help or pointers to a Mac based solution would be much appreciated.

Thanks. Alex.

[lucylawless]

I have a timer setup with my Dazzle box and BTV (iMovie is not scriptable). I have it record the simpsons 3 times a day, with a cron job launching one-line applescripts such as

tell app "BTV Carbon" to start recording

the drawbacks:
have to use a vcr as a tuner
have to leave everything plugged in (dazzle, vcr on the right channel)

if you fear crontab, or you're in OS 9, you can use the applescript command

delay 600

or something (600 seconds), but that only works on the latest applescript version, and if you run the script from the script editor it uses all available clock cycles (compile the script and it uses almost none while delaying)

[James Mullins]

G'day Alex,

James from the geelong store here, give me a ring.....

We might have a solution

James

[Swampthing]

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif">Originally posted by James Mullins:
<strong>G'day Alex,

James from the geelong store here, give me a ring.....

We might have a solution

James </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif">Uh... James, how about sharing it with the rest of us here? I think we'd all like to hear the solution!