analog video capture on a macbook pro?

[Electro Elvis]

Hi guys
Sorry if this is a stoopid question. I used to VJ a long long time ago, using 2 vhs players, a 200mhz pentium pc for visualization software (way too slow to run video properly), a handful of retro games consoles, a few video cameras, a matrix switcher and a Roland V5 video mixer (once my mx12 broke).

Fast forward 10 years and I've now got a brand new 2.53ghz mac book pro, and several crates of old VHS tapes.
I want to find out what you guys recommend I use to capture the VHS tapes into the macbook pro? Image-quality is not mega-important, i quite like scuzzy VHS images, I just want something that is quick and easy to use and will output into a useful format for use in VJ software. I'm hoping to capture whole tapes, save whole files to use as I would a tape and then also to then chop out my favorite bits from each for use in whatever VJ software I end up using.
I've got lots of tapes to convert and less than a month before I want to use all this footage and so i want something as easy and as quick as possible?

I been reading through the forums and codecs seem as big a minefield as they were 10 years ago, I was kinda guessing that mjpeg would be a fairly safe bet, to allow good backwards and forwards scrubbing?
And I'm also unsure whether to use 280x320 or 480x640 resolution?

Are there any usb or firewire devices compatible with my macbook pro, that will allow me to capture directly to that format, preferably cheapish as this is really just for fun? Or am i better off saving my money and using my dv camcorder and then batch converting the files????

Sorry if I'm going over old ground, but all the threads I could find seemed very old and I wanted to check what people are using these days with modern macintel laptops (which I'm assuming that lots of you have got)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, I'd be happy to sort out a couple of free tickets for my party in london on the 14th of nov, for whoever is of most help to this neo-luddite retro VJ.

many thanks
Electro Elvis
W A N G
www.wanging.com

[MrJustin]

Hello mate.

you probably want something like this.... http://www.roxio.co.uk/eng/products/.../overview.html

try searching usb (or firewire) video capture dongle. There's lots of products out there.

Depending on what the limitations of the dongle you get are, i'd capture in as high a res as possible - probably 640x480. Dont forget to deinterlace your video afterwards. And yes Mjpeg is probably the way forward for you, but is really dependent on what software you're planning to play back with. check the user manual for your soft of choice and see what filetype/codec it recommends.

there's a nice article on capturing from VHS here.



...or you could give me a call and hire me to do the whole shebang.

[sleepytom]

I'd capture to PAL res MJPEG - doing this on USB is not really possible without loads of frame drop. Either do it on a desktop computer or use a lower resolution.

Seeing as you only want to capture things once it would be worth finding a desktop with a capture card to get good quality capture from. Similarly you should hunt out a decent SVHS deck to do the playback and capture.

I would recommend finding someone with a blackmagic card or even something oldschool like a DC50 or rainbow runner - you can probably find a suitable card in the back cupboard of any soho editing place!

If your super keen then I have an SGI-320 machine with very high quality svideo capture somewhere (i think - it was last seen lying about outside my lockup!) I also have an SVHS deck which you can have if you want.

[stickygreen]

use the DV cam and batch convert with this : http://www.squared5.com/

[Electro Elvis]

Hi guys
thanks for the advice. In the end i popped into my local maplins and bought for £50 a discounted pinacle studio bundle with usb510 box with dv, s-video and composite inputs, about as consumer as you can get, nothing pro about it at all.
It only came with studio 11, but this works fine for basic the cut editing i want to do, which only only works on PC so I'm using a 3 year old pentium 4 desktop and transfering the files across, so far so good, its recording mjpeg 640x480 with no drop frames.
I'm dragging myself kicking and screaming into the not so new anymore millennium
now all i need is a very basic vj program that will let me trigger 2 clips and easily luma and chroma key between the 2, if only motion dive was updated for intel macs, i've got the mpd1 and everything

[zach]

Does anyone know of software that can use one of those video capture dongles for composite out? I just got one of the new Macbook Pros and am pretty pissed about not being able to get an analog adapter for the mini display port.

Thanks,
Zach

[drmo]

Originally Posted by zach

Does anyone know of software that can use one of those video capture dongles for composite out? I just got one of the new Macbook Pros and am pretty pissed about not being able to get an analog adapter for the mini display port.

Thanks,
Zach

what you need is a scan converter, cheap ones are usually crap (15fps, tearing) and good ones around £300. but there are loads of threads on this topic already.

alternatively realise the future is VGA/DVI and get yourself a *spark DVI mixer for £750...

[LEVLHED]

for a decent basic video mixing app AV Mixer(is this even free now?)
edit: "lite" version is free, that's what I was thinking of.

for higher quality archive analog capture on a mac for cheap, I'd go with the Blackmagic Designs USB Video Recorder capture at highest rez, and then chop out what you need from there. I haven't used one of these before though because me-no-mac. For what you are trying to do and your apparent comfort level with VHS-rez I think you could get away with 512x or 576x resolution for your performance clips.

[hiddenedge]

How about a matrox MX:02 Mini.

[vanakaru]

Originally Posted by LEVLHED

for a decent basic video mixing app AV Mixer(is this even free now?)
edit: "lite" version is free, that's what I was thinking of.

for higher quality archive analog capture on a mac for cheap, I'd go with the Blackmagic Designs USB Video Recorder capture at highest rez, and then chop out what you need from there. I haven't used one of these before though because me-no-mac. For what you are trying to do and your apparent comfort level with VHS-rez I think you could get away with 512x or 576x resolution for your performance clips.

Blackmagic USB recorder will capture only through the supplied software using h.264 chip in the card. So only this codec is available. It should be pretty fast though. I have it, but never use it. I bought it by mistake and poor information.