MPEG 2 capture hardware...

[gefsmith]

Just a short question...

Is there any news for a mpeg hardware encoder for Mac? I am keen to move all my tapes to DVD and a nice encoder straight to MPEG would be very helpfull...

I am open to various price ranges... Anyone got any good product info you could share?

George

[Frobozz]

ADS USB Instant DVD for Mac. www.adstech.com. Good price on this in the specials section of www.macsales.com.

[pants]

search this forum, there's another thread on this, from a few weeks ago, with a few more options

[mhar4]

here's one: http://www.elgato.com/products/eyetv200.html

Has anyone tried this device? Looks very nice. Expensive, though.

[SERBIAN]

http://www.wiredinc.com/aboutosx.html

"MediaPress is our third generation MPEG encoder, featuring realtime encoding from a variety of external devices, as well as transcoding of QuickTime files. With professional quality and reliability, MediaPress is perfect for any production enviroment where time is money"

"For over 12 years, the engineers at Wired have strived to bring professional real-time MPEG encoding to the masses. The result of their hard work is the award winning encoding solution we call MediaPress. Based on Wired’s realtime encoding engine, the MediaPress encoder combines the latest digital video technology to capture and compress video and audio signals into fully compatible MPEG1 or MPEG2 bitstreams for media network transmissions and DVD authoring."

MediaPress X SDI (now for G4 or G5) = $3799

[miksu]

Do you really need hardware encoder? I´ve been using Canon DV-camcodrer as A/D-converter and FCP-Express for editing, iDVD3 for mastering DVDs and iDVD3 has really high quality MPEG2-encoding.

It´s also quite speedy, it encodes 1h video in about 3h and I´m using old 450MHz Sawtooth with 896MB ram. It´s 4 years old hardware, every newer Mac with G4 will do much better, even faster than real time.

I think U have to pay more for MPEG2-encoder, than what U have to pay for decent DV-camera with FW in/out and few hundred MB of ram

For home use, I think days for encoder cards are gone. You can do same things with G4 and Firewire+DV camcorder. Saves U also pile of €€€ or $$$.

[brett]

one problem, miksu -- the middle DV step in your process from analog to mpeg is yucky -- bleh -- another problem: idvd is good, but not as good as a hw mpeg encoder (perhaps for the same reason -- cough, dv -- perhaps because i can go vbr with mine -- a replay tv -- but the ads usb mpeg encoder is bitchin as well with cbr) -- if you tried the straight analog to mpeg stuff, you might look back at your a/d/dv/fce/idvd stuff and gag -- like i do! -- and i used the superior bitvice instead of idvd for awhile as well! -- btw, either a replay tv or the ads usb thingy will cost you under $200 -- best cash you will ever spend on video projects, because they protect the source as much as possible -- i know your method has more intuitive ease of use and absolute editing flexibility -- but at the end of the day, you are staring at a picture -- protect it! -- just some thoughts . . . .