Thanks to both of you.
to get your VHS source onto your computer it would have to be digitized first. So either you digitized the video or someone did it for you. How this was done determines the base quality of your DIGITAL source. It can't be better than your source, but it can be converted to a more useful or less useful digital format (h.264 = more / mpeg2 = less for example).
Ah, I'm stupid. Actually I knew this, do not know how I forgot it when explaining what I am asking. I forgot that I know, that it is the hooked up hardware that changes the source from analogue to digital. Why else should I use this type of thing here called "A/D-converter". (Btw, the A/D-converter I am using is ADVC-300 via firewire and some times EyeTV250 via USB).
I can't explain to myself why I mixed up the hardware's job with what the software does.
it seems your asking how imovie handles video import for various versions.
Yes, that's it.
...but i can tell your quoting some rather old versions ...
I am using Vers. 3 and 5, because I have two PPC-Macs, that I possess for a long time, but never had any need to use iMovie before. I use my Macs 5-6 years (from the day on they were bought). The next buy (first Intel) is actually due, but I am still procrastinating it, but decided to start saving my VHS to an external disk better now then later and so I use my PPC-Macs with the old versions of iMovie they came with.
Noise filtering would be a filter...that's a post process.
... - in the software not the hardware, ok.
Have no idea what a "line time base" is.
ah, baseline time correction was the word I was searching for. ADVC uses TBC, EyeTV not. I thought Maybe iMovie does this too, on the fly.
In iMovieHD 5 you can choose that it saves the incoming material as mpeg4. I do not mean the converting to mpeg4 or whatever type after editing (chopping parts in between and all that stuff).
I thought the ADVC-300 changes the analogue one to DV and iMovie puts it in mpeg4.
After that I would cut/edit the film and convert it to h.264.
I choose to let iMovie5 record as DV, because I could not see the sense in capturing it as mpeg4, when I plan to convert it to h.264 afterwords.
If you've got your VCR hooked up to a DV camcorder and the DV camcorder attached to your Mac via Firewire, you can think of capturing it in iMovie as a file transfer. The camcorder is encoding the VCR's output to standard PAL DV, and your Mac is just recording that data.
If you try to do any colour correction or what have you in iMovie, a different engine in different versions might result in different quality. But these versions are so old I don't think you'll find much comparison online — probably best to just suck it and see.
Ok, thanks.
I am assuming this now, (right?): If I plan to save the films on an external disk and convert them to h.264 later, it does not affect the quality, if I use DV coming from iMovie2 or 5.
Example:
1. capture VHS in iMovie
2. save them to disk
3. forget about them
4. buy an Intel-Mac at the end of the year (because I do not want my PPC spend nights with converting DV to h.264
5. open DV file on external disk in mpegstreamclip(converter-app) on new Intel Mac, choose "convert to h.264", setting bitrate and everything I like.
It does not matter if iMovie2 saved it as DV or iMovie5 saved it as DV, right?
PS: I know, me using an ADVC-300 after my questions, sounds like a kid with one guitar lesson playing a Gibson guitar.
