For the video editors: Is this any good?

[GFLPraxis]

I've been planning to buy a video capture device at some point. I spotted this in Best Buy the other day:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=5870729&type=product&id=1064607747431

It has output and input for composite and S-video (unfortunately, most of the stuff in my house is composite, as only one TV actually has S-video, I think it does anyway, and nothing uses it). I remember people recommending the old Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge to me, but that is no longer sold.

Both my 1 GHz G4 PowerBook and my main Windows PC (2.5 GHz Pentium 4) have USB 2.0 and firewire. Sadly, no firewire on the device.

There is no mention of whether it is Mac compatible. Anyone have experience?

I will be using it mostly with my PC for now though I will probably transfer it to my Mac for burning (iDVD rules), and when I switch my desktop to a Mac (most likely when the Intel macs come out next year), I'll be using it on a Mac full time.


Oh, and what the heck is up with this?

1.5GB hard drive space per 20 minutes of video;

MPEG-2 can't possibly be that bad- how did Apple squeeze a 2 hour movie on a 4.7 GB DVD disk in iDVD?


Oh, and before anyone starts telling me to stay away from Best Buy, my sister works there, therefore, employee discount $102 instead of $129.

 

[matticus008]

It should work just fine, I'd bet money on it, but I have no experience with this particular product, so...disclaimer'd! iMovie and Final Cut products will probably detect it as a camera or some other generic capture device and you'll have to control the computer-side capture as well as the actual input device (analog camcorder or VCR or what have you). Of course, the software that comes with it will be Windows-only, so any value added for that will only be good for your PC.

When you buy it, try it out on your Mac right away. If it doesn't work, it might be worthwhile to take it back and upgrade to the Moviebox product, which I'm sure works with Apples. Especially since if Best Buy carries it, it'd be barely more than the retail price of the one you're considering with that discount .

The 1.5GB per 20 minutes is not a greatly exaggerated figure. Video is captured in DV format (an AVI file with no compression), and only when you edit and export does it get compressed to MPEG2. That's why the DVD preparation process takes so long--compression. I'd say that the actual demands are closer to 1.3GB per 20 minutes, but that doesn't make a huge difference in the amount of disk space you'll need. Keep in mind that you need space not only for the video files, but for the scratch space if you use Final Cut and for the virtual memory that'll balloon out of control when you start editing (regardless of editing application). And then, of course, you'll need space to store the finished, compressed video as well.