Video capture card options for pci-e PMG5 (late 2005)

[konfusion]

Hi!

I want to use my lovely PMG5 to capture and edit video footage from an analog SVHS camera.
Watching local craigslists for a suitable capture card I found lots of pcie cards, and some of them are Mac compatible, but only Intel-based Mac Pros are listed as compatible machines, I see no single word about PMG5.

So the question is: can you share your experience about using capture cards in such machines, or maybe there's a list of compatible cards somewhere?
My guess is that pcie G5's era was rather short, and many card vendors didn't care that much about supporting it. So finding a suitable one is not an easy task.

 

[davisdelo]

You want an AJA Kona 3G. They’re about 30-50 bucks on eBay. 2 SDI IN 2 SDI out (dual link is supported on both I/O), handles 16 channels of audio, it’s awesome. You can do up to 2k captures and it handles frame sizes up to 4096px. I’ve done a little playing around with mine here: http://delodigital.com/Aja/A_G5_Named_Aja/A_G5_Named_Aja.html

 

[AdamBuker]

1.What kind of outputs does your SVHS camera have? I think there should be options for composite, component, and s-video that were available.

2. Is your PMG5 a late '05 dual core model that uses PCIe or is it an earlier model that uses PCIx?

3. I know there should be video capture options for composite/component/s-video outputs that use a USB or Firewire instead of PCI cards. Would those work as well for your intended use?

 

[konfusion]

You want an AJA Kona 3G. They’re about 30-50 bucks on eBay. 2 SDI IN 2 SDI out (dual link is supported on both I/O), handles 16 channels of audio, it’s awesome. You can do up to 2k captures and it handles frame sizes up to 4096px. I’ve done a little playing around with mine here: http://delodigital.com/Aja/A_G5_Named_Aja/A_G5_Named_Aja.html

Thanks! AJA Kona 3G is really nice and looks a bit overkill for my purposes, requiring extra adapters and cables in order to connect a simple composite or S-Video. I will definitely add this one in my watch list though.

1.What kind of outputs does your SVHS camera have? I think there should be options for composite, component, and s-video that were available.

2. Is your PMG5 a late '05 dual core model that uses PCIe or is it an earlier model that uses PCIx?

3. I know there should be video capture options for composite/component/s-video outputs that use a USB or Firewire instead of PCI cards. Would those work as well for your intended use?

My camera has S-Video (preferred choice) and composite outputs.
My mac is a pci-e one, G5 quad to be exact. A also have PMG4 as a "backup" option for PCI cards.
Yep, I have tried a cheap chineese "Easycap" USB device, and, to my surprise, it works fine with PPC macs. But video capture quality is extremely poor (I mean it is really crap) for this thing, so I want to grab some old "prosumer" stuff. USB or FireWire is an option too if video quality is fine.