Capture Analog Video Losslessly Via FireWire !!

[dellsam34]

Yes, You read that right, Aja back in the day made an analog video capture device, The AJA Io LA that can capture 10/8 bit uncompressed video and 24 bit audio in addition to DV25 and DV50 from composite/S-Video/component using a firewire connection between the capture box and a Mac computer.

Here is direct quotes from the devices's manual:

"Many people associate FireWire with DV (Digital Video); unfortunately this has led some to believe that it only works with compressed video. The AJA Io family of products do not compress video or audio—they simply uses the impressive bandwidth of FireWire as a conduit to send A/V data to and from the Power Mac."

"FireWire is a cross-platform implementation of the high-speed serial data bus defined by IEEE Standard 1394-1995. It can be used to move large amounts of data between computers and peripheral devices—any type of data. It features simplified cabling, hot swapping, and transfer speeds of up to 400 megabits per second (FireWire 400). A new 800 megabit per second implementation (FireWire 800) is also available on many current Apple computers. AJA has co-developed the Io family of products with Apple to use FireWire for transferring 10-bit uncompressed video and 24-bit audio to and from an Apple Power Mac or Xserve"

I bought one very cheap from ebay to test it on a PC platform since I have a laptop with firewire, I will report back if it works with the common Windows capture software when I get it.

They are still available on ebay, I got the cheapest off the list already sorry.

Here is some online pictures of the capture box:

[DB83]

Good luck with that.

I see nothing in the manual about Windows support and the drivers are only for Mac OS.

The manual also goes on to say that uncompressed capture requires a raid array since although the interface can support the data a single hdd will not.

[jagabo]

At Firewire's 400 Mb/s (50 MB/s) modern drives can probably keep up, at least on the outer cylinders. Certainly SSDs can. But who cares about a 15 year old niche capture device that requires specialized drivers? IEEE 1394 is just a physical connection -- it could be used to transfer any type of digital data.

[Cornucopia]

Might still be a good buy if one were using a Mac (with FW ports), AND if needed capture of analog component/S/composite, AND if those A/D electronics are good quality. Aja usually makes good stuff, but that's still a lot of ifs.

Scott

[jagabo]

Might still be a good buy if one were using a Mac (with FW ports), AND if needed capture of analog component/S/composite, AND if those A/D electronics are good quality.

But does it work on modern macs? Can you get drivers/software to deal with it? Will you have to get a 15 year old Mac to use it?

Aja usually makes good stuff, but that's still a lot of ifs.

Definitely.

[dellsam34]

Lossless SD @ 10bit is around 270Mbps so modern computers and hard drives are not the problem. Now drivers could be an issue since there is no external buttons to control the box and tel it at what mode to capture, a software such as Final Cut Pro could be required (It originally shiped with the box), I will try Premiere on the PC to extract 8 or 10 bit videos and from there use ffmpeg to compress to modern codecs, Too bad it doesn't have a frame sync/TBC like my BrightEye 75, But $17 was worth a try.

[usually_quiet]

It makes little sense to me but for some reason, dellsam34 seems to enjoy collecting unusual video devices and consumer electronics which never quite became mainstream, which he then tries to use even though there may be easier and better ways to accomplish that same purpose today. As an example, see his thread on converting video for playback with a DVHS recorder.

[Cornucopia]

Might still be a good buy if one were using a Mac (with FW ports), AND if needed capture of analog component/S/composite, AND if those A/D electronics are good quality.

But does it work on modern macs? Can you get drivers/software to deal with it? Will you have to get a 15 year old Mac to use it?

Aja usually makes good stuff, but that's still a lot of ifs.

Definitely.

That's the big question. Only to get worse when 10.15 removes 32bit backward compatibility.
...
Oh, FFS, that's from 2004. So unless they had the foresight to create Universal code, or they subsequently updated it (nope, last update was 05), there wouldn't be Intel chip compatibility. Also, it's based on QT 6.x/7.x architecture, not AVFoundation.
Well, if you intend to go legacy like this, you'd need to go legacy all the way!

Scott

[dellsam34]

It makes little sense to me but for some reason, dellsam34 seems to enjoy collecting unusual video devices and consumer electronics which never quite became mainstream, which he then tries to use even though there may be easier and better ways to accomplish that same purpose today.

That's the fun part of the hobby, I do have the latest gear such as big OLED 4K TV, Home theater system with 100" projection screen but nothing come close in fun to playing around with old technology.

I like capturing old video formats including the pro ones but nothing comes close in quality than an old professional capture device that was made for that purpose.

[dellsam34]

Aja seem to still have support for legacy devices in this page, They even included the audio breakout cable pinout which I will be converting to unbalanced RCA's later and get rid of the D connector completely.

[ozymango]

That's the fun part of the hobby, I do have the latest gear such as big OLED 4K TV, Home theater system with 100" projection screen but nothing come close in fun to playing around with old technology.

Looking forward to hearing if/how it works!

Disclaimer: I recently acquired a Matrox RTX.100 video capture card for no other reason than it looked cool and was dirt cheap, and got it working on an old Compaq PC running Windows XP, using Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 (installed from a single CD!) to capture, and hey it still all works. Booting up Premiere 1.5 really took me back to my first taste of NLE video editing, talk about a freakin' miraculous piece of software.

[dellsam34]

It didn't turn out so well, My Windows 7 couldn't find a generic driver for it, It just displays 4 unknown new devices, So a Mac is a must, I will install four 3.5mm audio jacks (2 INs, 2 OUTs) on the back after removing the DB connector and put it back on eBay someone may find it useful for lossless capture on a Mac platform.
I will post pictures of the Mod.

[dellsam34]

Quick question, I'm going from balanced to unbalanced audio, Is it ok to ground the cold pins, Some advice against this because of ground loop, Some manufacturers recommend this for converting to unbalanced. Any audio expert here?

[DB83]

Not surprised it does not work.

But why go to the trouble of modifying it ?. Surely any available drivers require the box 'as is' or is that connector so legacy that it is not available anymore ?

[dellsam34]

It is too expensive and hard to find, bulky dangling XLR plugs that are not used in the consumer environment, Consumers are more familiar with RCA or 3.5mm jack, RCA takes up space so I opted for 3.5mm jacks. Plus the little fun that goes with it and it will increase the sale price on eBay, Enough reasons?

[DB83]

That is fine but when you have no way to test that the mod will work.........

[dellsam34]

No need to test the mod, I have the pinout and know what are the inputs and outputs. It's just a soldering job.

[lordsmurf]

Interesting item, but ultimately useless in 2019.

Been there with other hardware. Sometimes you have to test. Somebody has to!

[dellsam34]

Interesting item, but ultimately useless in 2019.

Been there with other hardware. Sometimes you have to test. Somebody has to!

I could only get it to power up and detected by Windows as Unknown, Someone with Mac system may find a good use for it, What other devices capture losselessly via firewire? Practically none, Mac users been stuck with DV for decades since they can't get these expensive devices back in the day, Now that they are cheap all what's needed is a Mac computer, Final Cut Pro and capture away.

[Cornucopia]

All what's needed is a WORKING, OLD Mac computer with enough working old storage, and an appropriate OLD version of FCP.
If the point is actually to transfer important DV footage, rather than go tweakhappy on nostalgic machinery, it is foolhardy to go down this road rather than get decent used PC-compatible equipment, refurbish an XP or Win7 era desktop, get a firewire port, free software, and go. Much more expensive your way as well.

But if that's how you get your kicks, it's your dime & your time.

Scott

[dellsam34]

All what's needed is a WORKING, OLD Mac computer with enough working old storage, and an appropriate OLD version of FCP.
If the point is actually to transfer important DV footage, rather than go tweakhappy on nostalgic machinery, it is foolhardy to go down this road rather than get decent used PC-compatible equipment, refurbish an XP or Win7 era desktop, get a firewire port, free software, and go. Much more expensive your way as well.

But if that's how you get your kicks, it's your dime & your time.

Scott

Not for DV footage, It's for Lossless analog capture. However I didn't get it because I don't have a PC capture setup, I just like to fiddle with old tech. I have the BrightEye 75 for my analog video capture and I love it, I like the full frame TBC feature in the BE75, Once digitized for TBC work it never converts back to analog, It stays digital all the way to Windows 10. By the way I have 3 of the BE75, I will be selling the extra 2 pretty soon.

[ozymango]

However I didn't get it because I don't have a PC capture setup, I just like to fiddle with old tech. I have the BrightEye 75 for my analog video capture and I love it, I like the full frame TBC feature in the BE75, Once digitized for TBC work it never converts back to analog, It stays digital all the way to Windows 10. By the way I have 3 of the BE75, I will be selling the extra 2 pretty soon.

If you end up selling your BE75s on ebay let me know, I can always use another piece of cool technology to blow a few bucks on.

Along those lines I recently acquired a Promax Promedia Converter (was gonna be tossed, I snagged it) that, theoretically, was designed to transfer uncompressed analog video/audio over a DV connection, but the supporting documentation is a bit fuzzy (literally, like scanned printed pages) and it looks like it was upgradeable, via firmware, to support uncompressed video transfer to different editors (Premiere, Avid, etc) but they had to work out the drivers for this so it was shipped with this option "greyed out." Bummer. This was made in 2004 and I can't find any later support docs on this beast so I don't know if there's any upgrade ever available for DV uncompressed, but there's also maybe an analog to SDI internal converter that might allow for at least 4:2:2 transfer, anyway ... having fun playing with it, anyway.

One thing in reading about video transfer after all these years (I dabble a bit today but just for fun, not profit), I love how nothing ever really changes, whatever it is you want to do isn't possible with whatever equipment you can get your hands on unless you spend $$$; in the old days you had to buy new equipment that cost $$$ and today you have to buy old equipment that now costs $$$, and if you buy a "pro" VCR it's probably not the right pro VCR, plus whatever TBC you manage to find isn't recommended because it's either a professional model that was never made for VHS, or a consumer model that was never made for professional work, or if you do find the magic TBC that is recommended, you could get the one model/version that has known issues, plus whatever capture card you can find either runs on XP, which you can't install on any new machine, or if it works on a newer machine is has the wrong chipset to capture whatever quality level that you need from your pro/am VCR, which may or may not have a TBC which may or may not work with the TBC you managed to find, plus of course once you capture your video losslessly (maybe two copies, so you can overlay them when you're editing to do some noise-reduction work), then you have to create an avisynth script to clean up whatever you managed to capture, so you can play it on a TV that may or may not have the right aspect ratio and/or deinterlacing hardware to make your project look like crap anyway.

[dellsam34]

One thing in reading about video transfer after all these years (I dabble a bit today but just for fun, not profit), I love how nothing ever really changes, whatever it is you want to do isn't possible with whatever equipment you can get your hands on unless you spend $$$; in the old days you had to buy new equipment that cost $$$ and today you have to buy old equipment that now costs $$$, and if you buy a "pro" VCR it's probably not the right pro VCR, plus whatever TBC you manage to find isn't recommended because it's either a professional model that was never made for VHS, or a consumer model that was never made for professional work, or if you do find the magic TBC that is recommended, you could get the one model/version that has known issues, plus whatever capture card you can find either runs on XP, which you can't install on any new machine, or if it works on a newer machine is has the wrong chipset to capture whatever quality level that you need from your pro/am VCR, which may or may not have a TBC which may or may not work with the TBC you managed to find, plus of course once you capture your video losslessly (maybe two copies, so you can overlay them when you're editing to do some noise-reduction work), then you have to create an avisynth script to clean up whatever you managed to capture, so you can play it on a TV that may or may not have the right aspect ratio and/or deinterlacing hardware to make your project look like crap anyway.

While learning the capture business for the last few years I was dealing with the same dilemma about PC friendly consumer equipment and non PC friendly pro equipment with weird connections and I'm glad that I finally found one thing than can streamline all those three together (PC, Consumer VCR's, Pro capture devices) with no problems at all, And that thing is the Digital SDI port.

SDI connection from its SD days to nowadays HD and even 4K kept a friendly relationship with all operating systems throughout the years when using the appropriate interface (SDI/SCSI, SDI/Firewire, SDI/USB), For today's systems all what is needed is a SDI USB 3.0 dongle that connects your weird pro analog video capture device to a modern computer and you are ready to capture 10 bit or 8 bit 4:2:2 from any analog source with pretty much any software including Vdub on any version of OS.

Although SDI USB dongles do nothing to the video they just act as a communication gate between the analog capture device and the USB port they are still expensive due to the demand from the pro community to connect the modern pro gear to computer. But they serve another purpose which justifies the price, You can connect them to any video player with SDI out such as Betacam for transferring the content without having to rely on the analog outputs of the player, Hence a lot of people call those dongles SDI capture devices but in reality they are not, They just transfer the raw uncompressed digital video as it is to the computer kind of like transferring D8 or DV to computer (except they are compressed streams).

An analog video capture system based on SDI would look like below in the stack, I know ugly but works with no problems, No frames dropped, no audio sync problems, no blue screen issues for loosing the signal, It just works:

[ozymango]

An analog video capture system based on SDI would look like below in the stack, I know ugly but works with no problems, No frames dropped, no audio sync problems, no blue screen issues for loosing the signal, It just works:

Ugly?! That's a stack of beauty!

Thanks for the SDI info, that gives me hope that my Promax Promedia Converter may just work as an analog/SDI capture/converter device box thing. I'll have to get an SDI input card/dongle and see if I can get my own stack of stuff to all work.

[dellsam34]

Ugly?! That's a stack of beauty!

Thanks for the SDI info, that gives me hope that my Promax Promedia Converter may just work as an analog/SDI capture/converter device box thing. I'll have to get an SDI input card/dongle and see if I can get my own stack of stuff to all work.

Is it the one here? Aside from the lack of TBC/Frame Sync it is a good capture box, If you have a firewire port on your computer you're good to go.

[ozymango]

Is it the one here? Aside from the lack of TBC/Frame Sync it is a good capture box, If you have a firewire port on your computer you're good to go.

That's it! Thanks for the link to the manual, I'll try some captures with it and see how it goes!

[godai]

it can works in a modern mac?

side note i been collecting stuff too for transfer old tapes, i broke my pig and i get one tapechek , very cheap but still expensive. this machine works amazingly. deserve a wow!

[dellsam34]

it can works in a modern mac?

side note i been collecting stuff too for transfer old tapes, i broke my pig and i get one tapechek , very cheap but still expensive. this machine works amazingly. deserve a wow!

Which machine are you referring to? Can you post a link?

[godai]

it can works in a modern mac?

side note i been collecting stuff too for transfer old tapes, i broke my pig and i get one tapechek , very cheap but still expensive. this machine works amazingly. deserve a wow!

Which machine are you referring to? Can you post a link?

i thought name says all.

its a vhs cleaner tape machine.

http://www.datadev.com/computer-tape-duplicator-cleaner-tapechek-460-vhs-video-tape-inspector.html

[dellsam34]

it can works in a modern mac?

side note i been collecting stuff too for transfer old tapes, i broke my pig and i get one tapechek , very cheap but still expensive. this machine works amazingly. deserve a wow!

Which machine are you referring to? Can you post a link?

i thought name says all.

its a vhs cleaner tape machine.

http://www.datadev.com/computer-tape-duplicator-cleaner-tapechek-460-vhs-video-tape-inspector.html

Not necessarily since we are talking about capture devices, Anyway that machine is good if you are in the business of capturing video.