S-video input to a mac mini

[gahamby]

Greetings all,

I have an older device that outputs S-Video. What's a good device for inputing that to a Mac Mini? I have seen devices that claim to do so that come with a software CD. I lack a CD drive. Any recommendations greatly appreciated.

 

[brucewayne]

Elgato Video Capture - you can download the software directly from their website

 

[gahamby]

Thanks for the reply. I am looking at that item. The software doesn't want to download. It clicks to please chose an app to open this. The App Store declines telling me it is not available in my region (USA). No other app will open it. Please advise.

 

[brucewayne]

https://www.elgato.com/en/downloads . Just downloaded and installed on a Mac mini M1 running Big Sur

 

[gahamby]

Thanks I will give it a try. Well that seemed to go just fine. Thanks so much.

 

[gahamby]

Well I bought an Elgato video capture device. It connects up just fine. The problem being it only records movies. I am trying to record 35mm slides one image at a time. Is there a device that accomidates stills?

 

[Fishrrman]

"I am trying to record 35mm slides one image at a time. Is there a device that accomidates stills?"

Sounds like you need a slide scanner...

 

[InuNacho]

I am trying to record 35mm slides one image at a time. Is there a device that accomidates stills?

Technology has moved on since I first started scanning, but my go to for a while has been my Opticfilm 7600i. It scans both negatives and slides so you're good if you have negatives as well. I've scanned thousands of slides and use Silverfast software which is a bit more expensive, but worth it in my opinion.

There are batch slide scanners from Pacific Image but those are pricey.

Below is an example of a not properly stored slide from the 70s scanned with my Opticfilm 7600i. This scan took about 30 seconds, was a single pass, and can easily be reprinted to 16+ inches on the longest side.

 

[gahamby]

Thanks for the reply. I have looked at those devices. What I don't want to do is unload a dozen 80 slide carousels. I have a Elmo TRV 35H video slide changer. It out puts S-video, RGB composite and what looks like SDI (BNC connector). I am looking for a video capture device/software that my Mac Mini will recognize and send these images to iMovie, Photos or some other editing software. The slide changer does, in fact, out put images. It will play into a display.

 

[Boyd01]

I found this spec sheet that references "C-video". That's not a term I've seen before, does it mean "composite video"? "Component video"?

http://www.mediafab.com/sales/elmo/pdf/11.pdf

Composite will look horrible by today's standards, very low resolution. S-video is better but still not great. RGB is *not* composite, it will likely be the highest quality you can get from that device because it has separate channels for red, green and blue. This is sometimes called Component Video.

But a device that outputs standard definition NTSC video will be 720x480 pixels. And the pixels aren't square like the standard for computers. So, in order to get the image into the proper proportions you really end up with only a 640x480 image.

Don't know what you are planning to do with the scans, but that's nowhere near the quality you can get out of a 35mm slide from a camera with a decent lens.

 

[InuNacho]

Thanks for the reply. I have looked at those devices. What I don't want to do is unload a dozen 80 slide carousels. I have a Elmo TRV 35H video slide changer. It out puts S-video, RGB composite and what looks like SDI (BNC connector). I am looking for a video capture device/software that my Mac Mini will recognize and send these images to iMovie, Photos or some other editing software. The slide changer does, in fact, out put images. It will play into a display.

Whoa now thats a device I would want just for its obscurity haha!
As cool as it is, I don't recommend it for archival purposes. I have a DVDO upscaler for RGB signals to 1080p but again thats only 1080p in 4:3. You're really better off getting a dedicated slide scanner or going DIY with a camera since 35mm slides offer about 14mp in resolution.

 

[iluvmacs99]

Thanks for the reply. I have looked at those devices. What I don't want to do is unload a dozen 80 slide carousels. I have a Elmo TRV 35H video slide changer. It out puts S-video, RGB composite and what looks like SDI (BNC connector). I am looking for a video capture device/software that my Mac Mini will recognize and send these images to iMovie, Photos or some other editing software. The slide changer does, in fact, out put images. It will play into a display.

The only software that can do this and is now quite expensive is Topaz Video Enhance AI and also you need an intel Mac with an external GPU card to run it. I used it with my Windows 10 PC with an Nvidia GPU card during the 2020 lockdown to convert all my S-Video, VHS and MiniDV capture videos to 1080p and 4K stills.

This is their version of Gigapixel AI for video and extracting video and turning them in still images in 8MP in 4K and 33MP in 8K with AMAZING RESULTS.

So what you do is capture the S-video of your slides. Then you feed the captured video into Topaz Video Enhance AI and it's Artificial Intelligence will convert your S-VIDEO footage into a series of highly detailed still images, if you choose the still image option, into a series of 8MP stills if you choose 4K or up to 33MP if you choose 8K. But be forewarned that you need to have a really beefy card such as the RTX 2060 as minimum or the RTX 3080 or GTX 1080Ti cards. The equivalent of those Nvidia for macs is minimum AMD Radeon RX-580 and the Radeon 6800XT or 5700. They are not cheap.

In fact, that's what I did during 2020 during the lockdown and that was to convert my VHS, S-Video and MiniDV footages all into 1080p and highly detailed stills so I can create movies through Davinci Resolve as well as using my other Topaz AI still software to enhance the stills that came out of VEAI or using DXO Photo Lab to further enhance my final stills.

The stuff you captured through Elgato or Diamond S-VIDEO source is of very very low quality. It's not worth even using these low rez footage in iMovie if your final product is a 1080p or 4K display. You need to upscale them and Video Enhance AI is the only software that not only can upscale them properly, but add in fake detail that wasn't there and look very and extremely convincing.

Now though, the software is $300 and the hardware needed to do that is also very pricy. If you have the required beefy hardware by renting a gaming PC, then you can download their free trial which I think is good for 30 days. And during the 30 days, convert your video to stills for free without paying the $300 fee and only pay the rental fee for the gaming PC if you have a place in your town that does that.

 

[InuNacho]

Just another reason not to go video -> still is that the slides might have aged.
The extra resolution and lossless file formats will let your bring back exposure, repair scratches/dust, modify "red" images for their cyan loss, etc.

 

[iluvmacs99]

Just another reason not to go video -> still is that the slides might have aged.
The extra resolution and lossless file formats will let your bring back exposure, repair scratches/dust, modify "red" images for their cyan loss, etc.

Yeap, I stopped doing that route through Video Enhance AI when I found a professional Canon medium format professional slide scanner at a thrift store barely used for like $30! Scan like 10 slides of 35mm and automatically goes through Digital ICE and fixed it and file them as a series of images for easy import into iMovie and Photos. I then upscaled these 35mm slides to whatever MP I need with Gigapixel AI via my Mac Pro with the RX-580. Much faster and better workflow than using video capture and through my Win 10 PC.

 

[gahamby]

Thanks for all the detailed replies. You've all given me lots to think about. I just read a manual for the Elmo. It does call the single BNC C-Video. Never heard of that either. My mistake on the RGB being composite video. For funky old gear the Elmo is kind of cool. The slides have definitely aged. The AGFA film ones are all red. These are just amateur snap shots that I want to digitize. I'm not sure how medieval I want to get with enhancing them. I really don't want to unload all those carousels! The Elgato gets returned today. I'll keep digging. Thanks GH

 

[Boyd01]

I recall old NTSC CRT video monitors that used BNC connectors for composite video (as a more robust alternative to an RCA jack). Most likely that's what it is.

 

[sublunar]

From this thread it looks like you've got around 1000 (12 x 80 carousel) slides to digitise. A machine to automate that is only outputting SD video with potentially questionable colour reproduction. I think s-video would have been the best analogue source - as mentioned earlier composite video would be second best by far and you're giving up an awful lot of potential detail by not getting a traditional scanner with slide/negative attachment. It's the kind of thing which high end Epson scanners do these days (look up the V series, you can go as low end as V100 or as high end as V800). The good thing is the software is free from Epson or you can even use Image Capture.

Obviously you're going to need a storage system and some patience with Photoshop or Lightroom or whatever.

I recall old NTSC CRT video monitors that used BNC connectors for composite video (as a more robust alternative to an RCA jack). Most likely that's what it is.

Those kind of monitors were dying out decades ago! Good times

 

[Boyd01]

1000 slides is certainly do-able with an inexpensive scanner and the results should be vastly better than anything captured as SD video. I have a cheap Epson scanner that is at least 10 years old. It has an attachment for scanning slides and negatives, works very well, I scanned a lot of my old photos that way.

The older I get, the more willing I am to take on big projects like this - I ripped about 1200 DVD's with Handbrake starting back around 2013. Took over a year, but I just kept doing them when I had a chance. If you could manually scan 10 slides a day it would only take around 3 months.

BTW, 35mm slides don't have a 4:3 aspect ratio like SD video. I wonder how your video scanner handles that? Most likely it is letterboxed with a black bar above and below. That would be another hit on the already low vertical resolution, you might end up with images that are only 640x400 or something.

 

[brucewayne]

I'm going to agree with the others - if you were converting vhs or Hi8mm video the Elgato device would be pretty useful.

But 35mm slides are going to have a lot more detail than that Elmo is going to resolve. Lets look at the path you will be taking - a 23 year old technology analog video camera at 811x508 interlaced lines of resolution over S-video (450 lines at best) to the elgato and its software which is going to introduce its own artifacts with compression and deinterlacing / detelecine, to iMovie where you are going to sit through the video and manually create an image which at best will be 720x480.

That is still a pretty large investment in time especially considering you'll end up with a result that won't be very useful. Imagine viewing the resulting image on a modern HD or 4k monitor or trying to print even a 4x6 at that resolution...

For a low cost solution, I would take that time to unload the carousels and grab something like this https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...B11B198011_Perfection_V600_Photo_Scanner.html which will do 4 slides at a time and comes with the software that will make the most of each slide and create a nice high res picture in whatever format you want. And when you are done you'll have a good photo / film scanner for projects in the future.

 

[mBox]

Uggh slides.
I recall a job in my earlier days for the local museum.
Over 5000 slides and artifacts to be photographed.
Def used a slide scanner on an 8400AV PowerMac....good times.
Now back to your issue.
Man, are you sure you want to recapture those slides by video?
Is the video for archiving?
Pains to hear your taking that path

 

[InuNacho]

Yeap, I stopped doing that route through Video Enhance AI when I found a professional Canon medium format professional slide scanner at a thrift store barely used for like $30! Scan like 10 slides of 35mm and automatically goes through Digital ICE and fixed it and file them as a series of images for easy import into iMovie and Photos. I then upscaled these 35mm slides to whatever MP I need with Gigapixel AI via my Mac Pro with the RX-580. Much faster and better workflow than using video capture and through my Win 10 PC.

Isn't the TopazLab suite amazing? I've been toying with it for a bit now and about to tackle my old father's old late 90's - early 2000's digital photography. I've successfully upscaled older 3MP images to at least 12 and the quality is pretty good!
Its the really old Mavica 640x480 images I'm going to have to muck around with a bit.

 

[iluvmacs99]

Isn't the TopazLab suite amazing? I've been toying with it for a bit now and about to tackle my old father's old late 90's - early 2000's digital photography. I've successfully upscaled older 3MP images to at least 12 and the quality is pretty good!
Its the really old Mavica 640x480 images I'm going to have to muck around with a bit.

Amazing it is and I couldn’t believe that it was possible. It brought me so much joy seeing those images again restored to their modern equivalents. I also enjoyed watching old VHS and MiniDv upscaled with their video AI suite and it is just SO NICE to watch them on a 1080p and 4K screen like it was shot recently. I didn’t know that it was even possible. Topaz suite is simply amazing stuff!