[MacDV] Re: vhs conversion

[Richard Meyeroff]

SB

I am thinking of swaping out the 80gb slave drive internal for a 
400GB (the master is a 250GB).

The reason that I posed the question I did was to get some guidance 
on what converter to buy and what features I needed.  It seems that 
there are only good things to say about most of the ones available 
excpt for the ones made by Formac.


>Buy a converter box for $175 and a big external firewire hard drive and
>you'll be good to go.
>
>Other World Computing usually has reasonable prices on external firewire
>drives. You can also check prices at DealMac.com or DealsOnTheWeb.com
>
>Make sure the drive is Firewire (not USB).
>
>You'll need approximately 100GB for each tape, so I would get a 160GB Hard
>drive to leave some room for the DVD (it will require 25gb before it
>encodes).
>You can do the editing with iMovie and the DVD burning with iDVD.
>
>If you have a new dual-layer DVD burner, you can fit more on it, otherwise,
>you'll get just a smidgen less than 2 hours per DVD, which, if you delete
>the commercials, will easily allow you to put two episodes on each disc.
>
>Once you have the converter box, you can set up your Mac to capture the TV
>show directly onto the hard drive with iMovie in real time. Makes it much
>easier/faster to archive those favs!
>
>  regards,
>
>  sb
>
>
>On 5/26/05 4:17 PM, "Richard Meyeroff" <rem at meyeroff-c-c.com> wrote:
>
>>  I am going to be converting 4-6-8 hour VHS tape taped from the TV.
>>  What I want to do is convert the tape to DV delete the shows we no
>>  longer want and then burn them to DVD.
>>
>>
>>>  The DataVideo tec works on Macs, as do virtually all the converter boxes.
>>>  They just take an analog signal and convert it to dv via firewire 
>>>which Macs
>>>  have had as a standard for about 7 years.
>>>
>>>  Many PC's still don't come with built in firewire.
>>>
>>>  I have used 4 different manufacturers converter boxes quite a bit. (Sony,
>>>  ADS, DataVideoTek, Canopus). All work well. I have heard the Miglia also
>>>  works well.
>>>
>>>  I have used some other boxes that I didn't like, Formac Studio being the
>>>  worst, in my experience, YMMV.
>>>
>>>  The audio doesn't go out of sync on any of them. (captures of an hour or
>>>  more)
>>>
>>>  Unless the camera was set to 32khz/12 bit audio, or you are 
>>>capturing across
>>>  a lot of timecode breaks.
>>>
>>>  Locked Audio is a feature of the DVCam spec. It locks the audio to each
>>>  frame. The normal dv spec allows the audio to drift within 1 sec 
>>>(30 frames)
>>>  before relocking, but in really it only drifts a frame or two.
>>>  If it drifted a whole second, then the audio would just stop and restart at
>>>  the beginning of the next second. Which I've never heard happen.
>>>
>>>  Loss of audio sync on long captures is virtually always either 32khz audio
>>>  or many tc breaks, neither of which is addressed by Canopus' Locked Audio
>>>  "feature".
>>>
>>>   regards,
>>>
>>>   sb
>>>
>>>
>>>  On 5/26/05 12:44 PM, "Nick Scalise" <nickscalise at mac.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>   On Thursday, May 26, 2005, at 11:52AM, Patty Winter
>>>>  <patty1 at sonic.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>   Jamie already answered the question about disk space, so I'll just
>>>>>   put in another recommendation for the Canopus A/D converter. I have
>>>>>   an ADVC-100 as well, and it works great.
>>>>
>>>>   One more vote for the ADVC-100 from me.
>>>>
>>>>   Also, the ADVC-100 will defeat Macrovision'ed tapes too. I do not
>>>>  know if this
>>>>   functionality has survived through to the ADVC-110. Helped me 
>>>>transfer some
>>>>   movies to DVD that would not play on the living room vcr, happy 
>>>>kids now...
>>>>
>>>>   Thirdly, Canopus advertises Audio Sync Lock, said to keep audio in sync
>>>>  over
>>>>   longer captures.
>>>>
>>>>   Q: Has anyone that is *not* using a Canopus unit ever experienced
>>>>  their audio
>>>>   going out of sync on longer analog captures? Just curious if
>>>>  Canopus actually
>  >>>  has an advantage or not.

-- 
Have a Happy and Enjoy

Richard E. Meyeroff
Meyeroff Computer Consultants
917-586-8790
REM at Meyeroff-C-C.com
Member  Apple Consultants Network  ACHDS

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