[MacDV] Re: Video Disc capture and creation help?

[Benjamin Ing]

On Thursday, Oct 16, 2003, at 09:16 America/Los_Angeles, Dr. M. Burek 
wrote:

> The reason I asked about all of this is I wanted to know about the 
> SETTINGS to use on this project - from people who have done somethng 
> similar before, and know. If I wanted and could afford to go out and 
> buy $3,000 worth of equipment to do this, I wouldn't have needed to 
> ask.
>
> While I do appreciate the opinions, I feel that the DV/FireWire route 
> is for people who have the money and not much time, and is the "easy" 
> way. I have lots of time, and not much money, so I have to do things 
> that way.

Do yourself a favor and check out the eyeTV from ElGato. It is a 
hardware MPEG-1 encoder that works through the USB port on a Mac with 
OSX and allows burning of VCD's.

The compression is MPEG-1, so it is not quite as good as DVD quality, 
but if you are transferring VHS tapes, it is probably as good if not 
better than your source material. Also, if you are willing to sacrifice 
the extra space, you can digitize at 340kB/sec (double the standard VCD 
170kB/sec) and burn to SVCD or DVD formats using Toast 6 (I haven't 
tried this yet since I am still awaiting my copy of Toast 6, but be 
aware that you will be introducing an MPEG-1 to MPEG-2 conversion).

Fwiw, the eyeTV was developed by the guy who actually wrote the program 
Toast, and the integration is great.

For under $200, the eyeTV is a painless, simple way to archive video to 
disk formats. Not involved with the company, just a satisfied customer, 
etc, etc.

Ben