8600 Hardware for VHS Transfer?

[riven2000]

I plan to do some transfering of old VHS tapes to DVD, and would like to know if I need any other hardware/software than what I have. Right now my machine is:

8600 (420Mhz G4 upgrade)
OS 9.2.2 (I also have 10.3.7 on here, but it's WAY too slow for video)
368MB of RAM
PCI Radeon card (original)
BTV Pro/iMovie for transfering/editing
2 small hard drives - I hope to increase this at some point

I've done a few tests and the video records with no dropouts through the AV-In, but it's just a bit choppy. Is this due to low RAM? Anyway, any help would be greatly appreciated!

[havema-1]

I edited a lot of old VHS and newer D8 footage with my stock 604e CPU 8600/200 and, later, with a G4 450 upgrade and FireWireDirect USB/FW PCI card. I used iMovie 1.0.2 which worked great (IMO iMovie 1.0.2 is the most robust version -- later versions got more features but also much bloat). I used Sony TRV320E to convert VHS to DV via its analog inputs.

iMovie 2.1.1 imported OK from tape but very easily stuttered when exporting to tape. THE fix was to import & edit with iMovie 2.1.1 and export to tape with v1.0.2. For more info check:

http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/iMovie_2.x_stutter.txt

The 8600's analog in/outputs don't really support full resolution video without some serious tweaking and even then it isn't very reliable. So I'd suggest you forget analog and use DV instead. But remember that on this old Mac even DV may require some tweaking.

I encoded several XSVCDs with the 8600 via MediaPipe but even with the G4 450 the encoding is so slow that I don't recommend it. Now I have a 1.25 GHz PB and have switched my video work entirely to it. I've also switched from making XSVCDs to iDVD 4 and IMO the quality is very good.