Mac recommendations for transferring home movies to DVD

[CelticDaddio]

I have experience with Win and Linux but not with Mac. I am interested in purchasing a mac for the purpose, main purpose anyway, of transferring my home movies to DVD. I have 8mm tapes, miniDV tapes and VHS tapes. The question(s) at hand are:

Which Mac to purchase? Can I use the mac mini? Or do I need something from the other end of the mac range? How much horsepower do I need?

What other hardware do I need? Video capture card?

What software should I use... does it come packaged with the mac?

Being experienced with Windows mostly, I was wondering if there is a description somewhere which gives an idea of comparative speeds of max vs. wintel machines...?

Ed

 

[flopticalcube]

With one of the USB dongles like Elgato to capture your 8mm and VHS (s-video input) and FireWire or USB for your miniDV you should be all set. I do home video editing on my MacBook C2D using iMovie and it works just fine. I would think that a mini 1.8 CD should be OK too, just make sure you get the Superdrive.

If you have a DVD recorder, you could also burn DVDs from your old 8mm and VHS tapes and pop that into the Mac for editing.

 

[Westside guy]

I used to use iMovie on a Powerbook G4 without issues; so I'd imagine even a Mac Mini will do just fine. But if you don't already have a nice screen I'd suggest also looking at one of the iMacs - for a bit more money you can get significantly better horsepower on both the CPU and the graphics card, plus a really nice screen.

 

[CelticDaddio]

I already have a Dell 17" flat panel.... but... two displays is always nice.... Can I use this dell flat panel as a second display on an iMac?

Ed

I used to use iMovie on a Powerbook G4 without issues; so I'd imagine even a Mac Mini will do just fine. But if you don't already have a nice screen I'd suggest also looking at one of the iMacs - for a bit more money you can get significantly better horsepower on both the CPU and the graphics card, plus a really nice screen.

 

[CelticDaddio]

Is the Elgato thing you mention one of the eyeTv products?
Ed

With one of the USB dongles like Elgato to capture your 8mm and VHS (s-video input) and FireWire or USB for your miniDV you should be all set. I do home video editing on my MacBook C2D using iMovie and it works just fine. I would think that a mini 1.8 CD should be OK too, just make sure you get the Superdrive.

If you have a DVD recorder, you could also burn DVDs from your old 8mm and VHS tapes and pop that into the Mac for editing.

 

[VoodooDaddy]

Id be interested in this as well. Can someone provide links to the hardware we would need? Im on a mac mini also.

 

[CelticDaddio]

So it appears that even the lowest model mac can do my task. But in reality, how painful would it be. I am reminded of one of Stephen Wright's lines... "Anywhere is walking distance....if you have the time". I don't want to have buyers remorse sometime down the road because I bought a capable, but somewhat underpowered machine. Then again, I am don't want to buy too much machine for the task, especially since this is my first mac.

How much memory is recommended for this type of task?
How much hard drive space?.... I assume as much as I can afford.

If the family likes the new mac, it will probably become the new family machine, which means Quicken, MS Office type stuff, IMing, email, net-surfing etc. Seems like any machine which will handle move capturing and DVD burning would handle these tasks without breaking a sweat.

Ed

 

[flopticalcube]

Is the Elgato thing you mention one of the eyeTv products?
Ed

Yes. Something like the eye 250 should do.

 

[Westside guy]

I already have a Dell 17" flat panel.... but... two displays is always nice.... Can I use this dell flat panel as a second display on an iMac?

According to Apple's product information, you can. The older iMacs did not have this capability though.

It might save you some money, too, since (if you wanted) you could go with the smallest (17") iMac screen - since you'd be using two monitors.

 

[kraftzwerg]

So it appears that even the lowest model mac can do my task. But in reality, how painful would it be. I am reminded of one of Stephen Wright's lines... "Anywhere is walking distance....if you have the time". I don't want to have buyers remorse sometime down the road because I bought a capable, but somewhat underpowered machine. Then again, I am don't want to buy too much machine for the task, especially since this is my first mac.

If you have the funds, I'd go for an iMac - the Mini would do the job fine as well, but you'd be more future proof with the iMac.

Yes, all of the office software etc will be no problem at all - that's much less processor intensive than video editing.

You can always add more memory and harddrive space later - iMac standard configuration is pretty good to start with already

 

[flopticalcube]

iMac would be better for gaming too, if that became important to you. Just don't get the lowest end model as it doesn't have a Superdrive or a gaming capable graphics card.