crossing over from mac to pc for capturing. What should i get?

[Sir_Loin]

Hi all

For many years now, i have been involved in video production and on the side, been making DVDs from home movies for others for some time. I have always used a mac and advc 100 for this purpose.

My side business is now becoming more popular and I am looking at options to grow.

My mac options seem to be
1. Second hand mac minis with advc 110 boxes (circa $800-$900)
2. Second hand mac minis with ezcap116 DC60+ (circa $700)

There are no monitors attached to these options so i would need to additionally purchase these.

Ive read many posts on here that the best tools for this purpose are on a windows based machine and so t is with a heavy heart that i look at this workflow. Due to my lack of not using windows for the last 15 years, I am at a loss at what type of machine and capture device/card i would need and would welcome any assistance in this area.

Thanks a lot

[Cornucopia]

I'm curious that in this day and age you are still primarily focusing on SD video. Is that what the clients are asking for there?
If not, you'll have to completely rethink your approach. Mac vs. PC is the least of your worries.

Scott

[lordsmurf]

For PAL, DV's 4:2:0 isn't bad.

[usually_quiet]

Hi all

For many years now, i have been involved in video production and on the side, been making DVDs from home movies for others for some time. I have always used a mac and advc 100 for this purpose.

My side business is now becoming more popular and I am looking at options to grow.

My mac options seem to be
1. Second hand mac minis with advc 110 boxes (circa $800-$900)
2. Second hand mac minis with ezcap116 DC60+ (circa $700)

There are no monitors attached to these options so i would need to additionally purchase these.

Ive read many posts on here that the best tools for this purpose are on a windows based machine and so t is with a heavy heart that i look at this workflow. Due to my lack of not using windows for the last 15 years, I am at a loss at what type of machine and capture device/card i would need and would welcome any assistance in this area.

Thanks a lot

If you want to continue using your ADVC 110 with Windows for SD capture, you can. ...but you will need to install an add-on card and you will probably want to get a desktop system. Firewire ports are not available on recent desktops and laptops, and few laptops have an ExpressCard slot for installing expansion cards anymore.

TI chips offer better compatibility in general. Here are three Firewire cards for desktops with TI chips. Some desktop systems only have PCI-e slots, while others have one or two PCI slots.

SIIG FireWire 2-Port PCIe (NN-E20012-S2)
Syba Low Profile/Regular PCI-Express 1394b/1394a (2B1A) Card (SD-PEX30009)
SIIG 3-port 1394 (FireWire) PCI adapter Model NN-400012-S8

If you find have a problem capturing using Firewire, install the legacy drivers. See https://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/Firewire-1.htm

Mac Minis use i5 and i7 mobile CPUs with two cores. A quad core i5 CPU would be better for SD conversions. If you expect to be working with HD sources on this machine some day, a quad core i7 would definitely be better.

[Sir_Loin]

I'm curious that in this day and age you are still primarily focusing on SD video. Is that what the clients are asking for there?
If not, you'll have to completely rethink your approach. Mac vs. PC is the least of your worries.

Scott

Thanks for you replies

A large part of what i offer my mum and dad clients is transferring their old family videos to digital. This is SD and this service is growing, hence my question. I have never been asked to create any blue ray disc or take any HD footage and downres it to DVD.

My 16 year background is in commercial & event post production animation, dealing with frame sizes that would blow your mind. So i have 2013 Mac Pro for this task and it also helps me to further encode my DV captures to MPG2 or other formats over night.

usually_quiet
Thanks for your suggestions. I will look into those

For PAL, DV's 4:2:0 isn't bad.

Thanks lordsmurf. I guess this is what i wanted to hear. I am working on a worflow that would allow me to capture SD at proRes HQ data rates. Would this be noticeably better?

Thanks again for your replies.

[Cornucopia]

I agree with what usually_quiet suggested - IF you need to involve DV. But you may not need to.
If your material was sourced as DV (from DV/HDV/DVCam/DVCPro/D8 camera), you could and should do a Firewire transfer for lossless storage onto the computer's HDD. But DV is already compressed SD (~5.5:1), with 4:1:1 or 4:2:0 color subsampling.
Even for analog SD material, if your sources are NOT DV-originated, you could retain much better quality if you do an uncompressed capture using a device like Blackmagic's Intensity Shuttle line (or alternately, Aja's). See: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/intensity. For ~$200, you would be getting 10bit uncompressed Analog composite/s-video/component, plus HDMI input for digital SD or HD. Because HD will probably be in your future at some point. And they have Thunderbolt and/or USB3.0 versions using external connector/converter box, so it should be possible to use these with either PCs or Macs.
10bit 4:2:2 should retain all the possible detail that any analog SD source could give you. You edit, then save a master copy, then export/convert to MPEG2 for DVD, H264-in-MP4 for Web, etc.

Saves you from a generation of lossy compression and reduced color detail and possible banding artifacts, though at the expense of increased filesizes.

For a hobbyist, I might not recommend this, just suggest the simple & compact DV route, but for a professional doing transfers for clients, I would think you want to give them the best you can afford (and this isn't way out of your range, it seems).

Scott