(OT)Analog to Digital Converters

[Jim Hyla]

I'm in the market for one. Does anyone have any recommendations? I've looked at the Canopus, but don't know anything about them.

[jeh25]

Buy a firewire digital camcorder with s-video and rca inputs.  Only $25 more than a *good* DV bridge and you get a digicam out of the deal.

[billhoward]

Jim, this is for video not audio or signal processing? You want to capture analog camcorder video for archival purposes or do you want to do scientific work with incredible precision? If it's consumer video, the source tape is your weakest link, so spending hundreds on an A/D converter would be overkill (IMO). You can get a standalone card for <$100 or a new video/graphics card with analog video in and that should do the trick. PCI Card or USB external, both have enough bandwidth to handle the video coming in, though if you can do it, go with the internal card or graphics card.

I'm assuming the video camera doesn't have FireWire (1394) because that of course is the best way to bring in digital video (although you did say analog).

If you want idiotproof analog tape direct to DVD, HP makes a nice capture/burner for $200 and the GoVideo dual deck VR2940 ($300 street) VCR / DVD+R/W device is really, really nice for doing the same but with automatic scene detection, meaning it picks up the start/stop points on your tape (up to 54 of them) and tags them as scenes. Total intervention to make a one-hour video from a tape is about 5 minutes, but you have to live with no editing.

Some DV camcorders let you do analog to digital conversion as a byproduct. You stream your analog tape into the camcorder and then out the FireWire port (without taping to DV). Sometimes (eg Sony cameras) this is a feature accessed only through the remote and is not well documented.

Even if you do nothing else than move analog (or DV) tape onto DVD media (which in MPEG2 format is not so good for further editing), at least you have stopped the tape decay process (all tape) and color shift/fade (analog tape).

Drop me a private note if you want more depth from our video capture expert (not me).

Or just buy a Macintosh. They are so darn good at this stuff.

I know a bit about video (like enough to say the cinema artistes at Lynah last night were slow on the panning to follow the puck) and there may, should, be others who know this stuff cold. That's the beauty of a liberal arts education - it makes you a mile wide, just not so deep.

[CowbellGuy]

Sorry, I'm pretty behind and just saw this thread. If you're actually talking about a DV bridge, where analog goes in one end and DV comes out the other via firewire, the Hollywood Dazzle is passable, but not great. Not sure how well it works with Windows, but Formac's bridge is quite a bit better:

http://www.formac.com/p_bin/?cid=solutions_converters

John's idea is a valid one, but you need to dump your content to the camcorder's tape (or whatever it uses) first. I don't know of any that work as a proper one-pass bridge without the tape intermediate step.

[Jim Hyla]

Well, I wanted to post it here to finish off the thread. The Formac that Age recommended is wonderful. Both for watching TV on the Mac, and converting old tapes to DVDs. Thanks again.