[leakyD]

Hi there-

I've just acquired an 8600, that I'll be passing on to my nephew so he can work on some video projects.

I'd like to upgrade the machine, so he doesn't have to deal with things until he (or his parents) can afford a newer mac.

I have a G3/300 ZIF. I posted in the For Sale forum, looking for a carrier card, ram, and a SCSI drive.

Is there anything else I could do to make this machine better to work with video?

Also, considering the age of this machine, what would be the best software for importing/exporting VHS video?

Chris (my nephew) wants to import VHS video and then make video collages. I think he wants to try and export his collages back to VHS as well. I'm kinda curious to see what he'll come up with.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Jodar]

There are some issues with the relatively slow system bus. I think your machine is as slow as mine (50mhz). I don't know how well your G3 upgrade will work with alti-vec video applications like iMovie and Final Cut Pro. The problems I'm having is with short video captures of 5 seconds or less. Perhaps the new Sonnet 800mhz G4 upgrade card will address this issue...

[leakyD]

ya, i figured the bus would be the limiting factor, but....

these machines were made for video work, right? wouldn't older software make for a "smoother" work experience?

i'll start diggin' 'round and see what i can find....

thanks for the reply,

[Bubba Jones]

When i was making the jump from cellular to 1's and 0's(actually at the time it was toying around with a novelty medium, but here i am today) i was working with my venerable 8600 and premiere 4.2.1. Man, they stayed with that version for a long time. Anywho, times change, but at that time those were an excellent mix. Just be prepared to do mainly work for the web. Video resolutions over 320x240 really make the stock system crawl.

[Panzer]

You know people did do video work before DV and G4s
Probably the most important thing is having an additional hard disk used only for video capture. The CPU is really not that important for doing the initial capture, just for compression. I was able to get 30fps at 320x240 on my 7500/100 some 6 years ago using the Component Video codec (no compression, just optimized for writing to the disk), but it consumes massive amounds of space.
With the G3/300 you may be able to get 30fps using the Motion JPEG or Photo JPEG codecs for the initial capture, which will really save on space.
As I recall, my 7500, and 8600 both came with software for this, it was Avid Videoshop, which became Strata Videoshop after a buyout. It was a pretty good program, standard QuickTime capture options, good editing features and capable of full screen presentations. In my experience, system 8.6 was the best OS for this hardware.