Video Capture on PowerPC

[Cory5412]

Back in the day, I used a Sony FireWire adapter. It was either a DVMC-DA1 or DVMC-DA2, and either should work just about perfectly. I happened to be using it with a Panasonic 1980 video deck, but anything else would work jut as well.

Another good option is to use a DV camcorder that has an analogue input, which a surprising number of them do, I had a lot of good luck with a Canon GL2 for this purpose, but that may be somewhat spendy purely for video transfer purposes.

Another possibility is that there were SVHS and DV combo decks. JVC made one, for example. The big gotcha there is I don't know how long those really lasted.

I'd trust any of these more than most USB adapters, at least on old PPC Macs, and even doubly so on systems that don't have USB 2.0 or 3.0. I did a lot of DV capture on my blue-and-white Power Mac G3 back in the day. (Though, it did have a Yikes! G4 board.) I did some while booted to Mac OS X, but most of it was while booted to Mac OS 9, onto a cleaned-off 20 gig internal disk. Then I'd move the captured video to another disk for editing (either on the G3 or a PowerBook G4 I had), and then copy the finalized video back to the G3 to print it back out to tape.

 

[Altemose]

ASD 2.5.8. The G5 is a PowerMac7,2.

Interesting... 2.5.8 is the correct version for that PowerMac!

 

[Cox Orange]

I purchased a Grass Valley ADVC-110 to record VHS to PC. I also picked up a pretty late model VCR at Goodwill... I'm sure there are better ones out there but this one has a pretty clear picture, which I guess is pretty much all I need.

I've tried using the ADVC with my digital camera, playing out via composite, and it looks to record pretty accurately to what it would be if I just transferred the file over. I haven't been able to try with any VHS tapes since I keep forgetting to pick them up from my mom's.

It was expensive, especially since I bought it new, but once I'm done with it I should be able to sell it for most of my cost. I could have saved some by buying used on eBay but I usually get burned when buying used electronics.

I had the ADVC-300. I never noticed, but the ADVC-300 has a problem. Someone found out, that actually the audio starts 40ms earlier and then the gap gest less and less, in the middle of the movie when they are on par and the audio is from there on getting behind the video (by milliseconds) the ADVC doubles a frame from time to time, so that audio is synchronous again.
It is said, that the ADVC-110 has not this problem, but then again the ADVC-110 has no TBC.

I was satisfied with the ADVC-300 (S-VHS-VCR -> SCART-composite cable -> ADVC-300 -> Firewire400-cable -> iMovie) until I wanted to convert the DV footage to x.264 in Handbrake. Handbrake asks, if edges should be cut and I got weird numbers. So I asked in a video forum and the answer was:
"your picture has been treated wrong, once and a 52µs line was embedded into a 53,3µs line, instead of changing the pixels as per their ratio.
The SD Pixels are always slightly squished in height because of the given 702 pixels. Because of this the signal has to be slightly "de-squished" during conversion for a correct presentation.
On a monitor, while a video is playing, this is be done by the electron-rays.
That was missing with your signal.
Instead it was mapped in the middle of the bigger line (Bildzeile?).
You will have to change the signal 788 pixel horizontally and then crop the 52µs content."

I am investigating, if that has to do with the ADVC-300 currently and what I will use instead.

Alternatives: one could use a Blackmagic Design video capture card in a PowerMac G5 PCIe.