vhs to imove

[24seven]

this is possibly a dumb question but here we go

 

 

I have an apple mac with imovie on it and endless hours of my lighting work on VHS videos

 

 

how do I get the video from the Vhs Cassette to imovie ???

 

 

 

I dont have a video camera otherwise that would be easy is there some sort of box you can buy to convert it ?

 

 

 

as I would like to put video on my website as sometimes pictures are just not enough

 

 

 

thanks

 

Mark W-E

[Tomo]

The item you require is a Video Capture Card or Video Capture Box.

These are available in USB and Firewire (IEEE1394) versions.

The Firewire units are sometimes referred to as Firewire Converters, as Firewire is commonly considered as a video transmission standard, even though it isn't really.

 

However, Apple iMovie will probably be happier with Firewire as that's what it expects from a camcorder.

 

Here are several boxes that do just that - Firewire to composite video and back again.

 

Note, several of these are much more advanced than you need, and I've no experience with these products or manufacturers.

It was just the first hit on !

[Pete McCrea]

Pretty much as Tomo says.

 

Use Firewire. USB is sllllooooooowwwww, and USB2 is slower than FW400 in realterms (On paper it's quicker, but several test show FW400 to achive better data rates).

 

Basically you plug the device into the iMac, open iMovie and then start a new project. Then start the tape running and then start capturing the footage in iMovie. Nice and easy. Then edit to your hearts content and output as a movie. Compressing the file to a decent quality low size file will take the time though.

[paulears]

Well on the PC, it really doesn't matter if you go USB2 or Firewire. My DA has both and I never worry which I use. The main differences in the devices available are the type of input - composite video on all, some have y/c too, some better quality ones also have y/u/v. The other thing is what format image they can produce. Full frame DV as in avis or dvs need a little more money. However, ebay can provide you with something for less than £90 that is quite good.

 

after you have the converter either as an external or internal device, wire up, hit record on the computer, play on the vt and that's it (apart from the mega amount of HD space required, of course)

[Yorkie]

The Apple store has some appropriate Analogue to Digital conversion boxes, both at £199:

Canopus ADVC-110

Miglia Director’s Cut SCART

[24seven]

thank you for all your help I managed to get this off ebay so let the fun commence

 

 

Mark W-E

[Stutwo]

Best of luck, I've had some horrible times trying to get VHS into iMovie. It usually needs to detect a device e.g. video camera that it can control via firewire before it will accept any incoming picture.

 

In the end I used a deck with DV and VHS players, fooled it into thinking I was inputting DV by recording onto a blank DV tape while playing VHS on the other half of the deck! It wouldn't recognise the VHS side by itself. Old versions of Imovie did, but then Apple "improved" it with iLife 05.

[jhughes01]

Best of luck, I've had some horrible times trying to get VHS into iMovie. It usually needs to detect a device e.g. video camera that it can control via firewire before it will accept any incoming picture.

 

Whilst not on the mac platform, I've had similar anguish with the Matrox x10 Capture card, which kept locking up Adobe Premiere when asked to perform analogue conversion. I found turning DV device control off persuaded it to stop checking for a camera, and allowed it capture analogue.

As I say, this isnt mac - so the setting may not exist - but it might be worth looking for.

 

HTH