Captured Video: From Mac to PC, is that possible.

[Teenacidal]

I'm using my friends XL1 to shoot my film, i only have an old a ATI analog capture card on my pc, he has a MAC with a way better card. Is it possible to capture on his computer and get it to my pc some how, i got a Maxtor external 160gb hard drive, i don't know if that helps me in any way. Thanks in advance.

[redwudz]

Assuming you are using a DV camcorder with FireWire output, you don't need a capture card, just a FireWire card. But All Macs these days can use the same video formats as a Intel PC. If the files are large, a USB hard drive should work fine for transferring to your computer. But I would use the Macs HD if you really do need to capture with a video card, then the USB drive just to transfer. If you want the best quality, use a lossless or low loss codec like HuffyUV or similar. But the files will be very large.

If you use DV, it takes about 13GB HD space per hour of video.

[FulciLives]

Since this is a DV camcorder it doesn't make sense to capture to a computer using anything but FIREWIRE as this is simply a "data dump" from the DV camcorder tape to the computer. We are talking a complete digital copy that is the same as what is on the tape.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Teenacidal]

yeah, my maxtor drive is usb, can i just hook it up to his computer and move the footage onto it with out formating the maxtor drive?

What exactly is a firewire card, would my computer already have that?

[Teenacidal]

Okay, i see what a firefire looks like, it seems like the same input as my maxtor input, my maxtor goes from that to my USB input on my pc, can i input the camera into a USB, with a special cable?

If i just want to buy a firewird card for my pc, do i need an expensive one, i see ones i can buy for arounf 10 bucks. Will they cause me anyproblems?

[FulciLives]

Okay, i see what a firefire looks like, it seems like the same input as my maxtor input, my maxtor goes from that to my USB input on my pc, can i input the camera into a USB, with a special cable?

No. You need FIREWARE. FIREWIRE is also known as IEEE 1394 and then Sony tends to call it i.link and some just call it a DV input or DV port.

Chances are your computer has one already ... if not you can buy a PCI card that will add FIREWIRE ports to your computer.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Teenacidal]

I'm looking at these cards on ebay for about ten bucks, way cheaper then setting up a capture card, is there away to output my analog HI8 to these cards?

[FulciLives]

Adaptec usually is considered the best.

Here is one for $31.99 US Dollars plus shipping: CLICK HERE

You should also be able to find this at a store like CompUSA etc.

In fact here is a link to the same thing (more or less) at CompUSA: CLICK HERE

Good Luck !!!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[FulciLives]

I'm looking at these cards on ebay for about ten bucks, way cheaper then setting up a capture card, is there away to output my analog HI8 to these cards?

I would go with Adaptec myself but whatever.

No you cannot output analog Hi8 via FIREWIRE unless you have a Digital8 camcorder ... most of those can play back Hi8 and output it as DV AVI via FIREWIRE since Digital8 uses DV just like a DV camcorder.

Another option ... some DV camcorders have analog input. You hook up your analog Hi8 to the input of a DV camcorder then output that to the computer via the FIREWIRE of the DV camcorder which does the analog-to-digital conversion. I would think the Canon supports that as it is a very expensive camcorder that model is but not all DV cams feature analog input.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[redwudz]

You would need something like a Canopus ADVC-110 to convert analog to DV if your Hi-8 doesn't have a FireWire output. Some DV cameras can also 'passtrough' a analog video signal and output DV.

You should to be able to get a FireWire card for less than $30US. But if your friend has FireWire on his Mac, it might be easiest to just transfer to his computer, then into your USB hard drive. DV would have to go through a computer before you could put it on a hard drive. But if you plan to do this regularly, I would get a FireWire card and cable.

Keep the video in DV format for editing. When you are done with that, then you can encode it to MPEG-2 if you want to create a DVD from it.