Video capture options for my 9600

[Powertrip]

Instead of adding to my conquest thread, I figured I would start a new thread for my question.

One of the tasks I'm hoping to use one of my 9600s for is converting my fiancé's old camcorder videos to digital. Most of them are from before her father passed away and she has expressed interest in this. I know on either side of the 9600 I have the 8600 with AV capabilities and the beige G3 with AV capture. But from what I'm reading (my Mac a/v knowledge is pretty much non existent since when I was using them back in the day it was mostly for gaming) is that the onboard options are ok but not that great on those other two options.

So here is my question: do I A: find a capture solution to put into my 9600? If so, what are the best options?

B: try and get my 8600 (200mhz?) shipped down from Illinois and use that? If so, what software?

C: do I get one of my beige G3s sent up to use? Again, what software should I use?

Note: regardless of which option gets recommended, I'm willing to put a couple hundred into one of the machines. Whether drives, cpu, or capture cards.

Edited to add: I tried to search the site and Google but most of the answers seemed to bounce all over without a clear consensus.

 

[Hrududu]

The built in composite video input will work well for video capture.  I've done so using software called BTV Pro which seems to have been discontinued.  It runs under OS 8-9 and is a great app.  The most important factor is HDD write speed.  I never had an internal SCSI drive that would write fast enough to not drop frames, so I installed a FireWire PCI card in my 8600 and used that as the scratch disk.  Once I did that, I had a nice little setup.  Another (probably better) setup is using an EyeTV 200 with FireWire to capture video.  The quality was about the same, but the compression was better and allowed for easier viewing.  It would run under OS X though.

 

[Powertrip]

Thanks. I'm planning (though plans change) on sticking to OS 8/9. I Need to pay better attention to what I have as I didn't think my 9600 had ANY inputs, only the single output on the graphics card.

 

[Powertrip]

As an additional question: what exact components would I need to source in order to have a full Avid video capture/editing setup?

 

[CelGen]

The 9600 has absolutely no onboard video I/O. It's all PCI cards.

I know for a fact that Avid sold 9600's with Truevision boards. Options included hardware MJPEG compression, sound and SCSI cards. My truevision cards are limited to Mac OS 7.5.5 because it seems nobody ever made the updated drivers and control panel public (and if you try running the control panel on anything later the machine simply crashes) but the card not only works with Avid's suite but also Adobe Premiere which a s touch easier to get hold of.

 

[Powertrip]

Thanks!

 

[Powertrip]

Is http://m.ebay.com/itm/261750093628 the card you're referring to?

 

[CelGen]

Close but the connectors are different. Also good luck finding the cables for that.

 

[trag]

The Aurora Fuse was well thought of in its day.  I never tried it.

The poster who mentioned built-in capture was probably thinking of the 8600 instead of the 9600.

 

[Powertrip]

That make sense since I'd listed getting my 8600 down here as an option.

Is the Aurora Fuse or Igniter considered the better option? What software was used back in this era? Final Cut Pro 1.0-2.0?

 

[trag]

That make sense since I'd listed getting my 8600 down here as an option.

Is the Aurora Fuse or Igniter considered the better option? What software was used back in this era? Final Cut Pro 1.0-2.0?

My one original sentence pretty much exhausted my knowledge on the topic.   I remember reading a review of the Fuse back when it was new, and the conclusion was something along the lines of, "What wonderful video capture for only $500."   And I wanted one, but never bought one.

I think, but am not at all certain, that the Igniter was better.  The Fuse does not have sound capture.  It relies on the host machine for that.  Perhaps the Igniter adds sound capture?

I have zero memory of the software.  I would guess some version/versions of FCP and maybe the program that shipped with the Radius cards, the name of which I can't remember.

 

[Powertrip]

Thanks. I'm hating to say it... But my inexperience with all this has me now thinking my best bet is going to be my G3s with a/v personality card and maybe Adobe premier.

I'd rather a 9600 but just don't know enough to guarantee I get the right turnkey setup with all the cards, cables, and software to accomplish my goals.

 

[trag]

Surely this topic was discussed ad infinitum back in the day.   The trick would be to find those old discussions.  Many of the relevant forums have disappeared, which is why web forums are a terrible idea as compared to UseNet.  Sigh.

You might hunt around the MacGurus.com forums.  They were around during time period in question.  You might also try a search of Google Groups, as it contains the UseNet archive, although the search seems to malfunction (not return stuff that **I know** is in there) as often as not.   Search on meaningful terms in the group hierarchy comp.sys.mac.*

 

[Powertrip]

I guess my problem is the lack of industry knowledge surrounding this stuff from that era. I will continue looking and see what I can learn.

 

[RacerX]

I actually used an 8600 for a few years to do video capture, so I'll describe what I used and why... hopefully it'll be helpful.

Processor... I was using a G3/350 upgrade card. It was a nice speed bump and helped most with the video editing later on (I'd capture uncompressed video, edit the segments together and then apply video compression).

Memory... I had my system at 512 MB of RAM.

Video Memory/display graphics... I used an ATI Rage 128 with 16 MB of memory (pulled from a Blue & White G3 that had a faulty logic board) for my display. I loaded up the onboard graphics memory with 4 MB of VRAM, this is important because if you aren't using any of that memory to run a display... all of it is used for AV processes (like capturing video).

A quick note... this onboard VRAM for AV is the same for the Beige G3 with the AV unit installed. If you install the maximum 6 MB of VRAM and used a display card for your monitor, all that VRAM will be applied to AV tasks.

Hard drive... Larger, faster is better. I used the onboard SCSI hard drive (8 GB) for OS and applications, and had a 80 GB ATA drive connected via an ATA/133 card which was where I directed the raw video to be stored.

Software... I used Strata Videoshop 3.0 (because I had gotten it for free) and later Strata Videoshop 4.5 (which had also become free). I had the full version of Quicktime 5 installed, but all the included codecs are available via Videoshop even if you don't have the full version of Quicktime. I also had Strata MediaPaint for some effects. Later on I got Adobe Premiere 5.1 and After Effects 3.0, but I also made use of Adobe LiveMotion 1.0 (which had a similar interface set up to After Effects).



This system effectively replaced my previous video capture system... an SGI Indy with an Indy Video card and Cosmo Compression card. That system was great at capturing video... but I was limited by the small hard drive (8 GB SCSI) and limited video editing software (I would usually transfer the video to one of my Macs to do any editing or assembling). Generally on that system I was limited to capturing about 6 minutes of video before I ran out of room... I'd usually grab around 15 minute long video segments on my 8600 at the same quality level.

Hope that helps.

 

[Alex]

Found a good link on the aurora fuse. https://web.archive.org/web/20000815053348/http://www.auroravideosys.com:80/Pages/aurorafuse.html

 

[Alex]

More on Aurora Fuse PCI Card Also, http://archive.digidesign.com/download/utility/aurora/

http://archive.digidesign.com/support/readme/AuroraFuseReadMe2.0.2.pdf