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ATI XClaim VR AGP recording on Mac? (not All-In-Wonder)
- Thread starter Bunsen
- Start date
They likely won't work due to architectural differences. ATI did develop Macintosh cards with the same Rage Theater capture chip though, the XClaim VR series. The PCI/AGP All-in-Wonders have excellent capture quality, but ATI's odd way of interfacing with the chip on these cards made creating WDDM drivers for anything past Windows XP difficult. I doubt its an issue with OS X though, just someone needs to write the driver.
Even the Windows drivers for these cards suck. And given how Linux and BSD have only very spotty support for them as well writing a MacOS driver is probably a pretty long pole.
(Also depending on the generation of the card the hardware itself was prone to conflicts; a friend of mine ended up returning a Radeon-era one because the oddball AGP-PCI bridge chip used to interface some of the features conflicted with something on his particular motherboard. Research suggested it was a not uncommon problem.)
In any case, to use one of these in a Mac at all wouldn't you need to flash it with an Open Firmware compatible video BIOS? I dunno, maybe you could use the firmware from a non-AIW card, but if there's any initialization code necessary for the capture bits that ATI stuck onboard that might be another hurdle for writing your driver.
(The one exception of course might be for an All-In-Wonder that's hardware identical to a Mac VR Xclaim. A BIOS swap might be all you need in that one case.)
(Also depending on the generation of the card the hardware itself was prone to conflicts; a friend of mine ended up returning a Radeon-era one because the oddball AGP-PCI bridge chip used to interface some of the features conflicted with something on his particular motherboard. Research suggested it was a not uncommon problem.)
In any case, to use one of these in a Mac at all wouldn't you need to flash it with an Open Firmware compatible video BIOS? I dunno, maybe you could use the firmware from a non-AIW card, but if there's any initialization code necessary for the capture bits that ATI stuck onboard that might be another hurdle for writing your driver.
(The one exception of course might be for an All-In-Wonder that's hardware identical to a Mac VR Xclaim. A BIOS swap might be all you need in that one case.)
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For NTSC: I've used one of the Sony devices listed in this MacWorld article from the era, primarily with Mac OS X (10.5, Final Cut Express, also iMovie), but "DV" is pretty standardized so there's no reason they won't work with iMovie or Final Cut 2/3 on OS 9 on a G4 Cube.
The Formac Studio DV/TV may be the "best" option, certainly the aspect of FM tuning on a modern Mac is pretty interesting. As mentioned, the TV tuner may be no good, unless they later updated it to be an ATSC and/or DVB-T tuner that puts HDV in, although you'd probably need OS X and a newer copy of iMovie or Final Cut (like, from 2004 or later) to capture HDV.
There also appears to be a Formac Studio DV that only has the analog/DV conversion functions.
Another nice thing about many of these bridges is you can connect an analog TV and video deck to the output side (at least on the Sony) and "print" your video to tape, or use that as a preview monitor when you're editing, depending on what software you have.
The Formac Studio DV/TV may be the "best" option, certainly the aspect of FM tuning on a modern Mac is pretty interesting. As mentioned, the TV tuner may be no good, unless they later updated it to be an ATSC and/or DVB-T tuner that puts HDV in, although you'd probably need OS X and a newer copy of iMovie or Final Cut (like, from 2004 or later) to capture HDV.
There also appears to be a Formac Studio DV that only has the analog/DV conversion functions.
Another nice thing about many of these bridges is you can connect an analog TV and video deck to the output side (at least on the Sony) and "print" your video to tape, or use that as a preview monitor when you're editing, depending on what software you have.
rsolberg
Well-known member
Canopus also made a range of FireWire capture devices that have been well regarded. When in a bind without such a device, I use a Canon ZR series camcorder. When in playback mode in its settings menu, there's an AV-DV out function that allows one to connect composite analogue AV device to the camera's AV connector and it streams DV to the application of your choice. I've been doing so since the G3 slot loading iMac came out, so there's a very good precedent for compatibility.
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