Capturing Live Video to Mac

[knightflyer150]

Good evening. I worked in video production for 7 years and have taught a section of high school broadcast journalism for the last 15 years. So, my knowledge base is pretty good, but I'm not up on every technical detail to date.

My class shoots a daily news show and we are trying to get the video signal to record directly into iMovie or Adobe Premiere from the camera. We use a couple different consumer HD cameras from Canon. I've tried two things, both have their issues. Either would be a good solution, if I could get either to work.

1. I am coming out of the camera with RCA cable and doing an Anaog-Digital pass-through with our older GL2 camera. Then, I come out of the GL2 with a firewire and into the iMac. The video and audio show up on iMovie (but not Premiere), HOWEVER, the signal is not recorded or captured. I believe the newest iMovie software has a hard time with the lack of timecode. Struggling.

2. The second option I have is to come directly out of HD camera with an HDMI cable, directly into iMac. This bypasses the GL2 and firewire port. I'd prefer this, b/c signal is cleaner, HOWEVER, I think I need an HDMI capture card. I also may be wrong completely.

Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

[smrpix]

What cameras are you using, and why aren't you just copying the contents of the SD cards directly into your system?

[knightflyer150]

B/c they are high school students, we use cheap HD cameras (some are the Canon vixia RF600). It has a composite out and a HDMI out. As mentioned, I'm running it through the GL2 to convert the composite signal to Firewire digital.

We can use the SD card to import, and have done this, but I want to mimic a live news show as close as possible (i.e., mixing the audio, adding 2nd cameras, etc). Eventually, we will stream the show live.

One thing I didn't mention:

We have an older iMac with the firewire input. However, I can, with a little finagling, get my hands on a newer Mac with Thunderbolt port.

Thanks.

[smrpix]

I see. I was incorrectly making the assumption these were field pieces.

I've had good luck with the Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle as an HDMI->Thunderbolt capture device.

[knightflyer150]

Ok, thank you. Am I understanding that the iMac does not have HDMI capture ability without the converter?

[smrpix]

Correct. No mac has native HDMI input. (No PC either to the best of my knowledge.)