On Nov 28, 2005, at 7:27 PM, Tom W. wrote:
Miglia box (http://www.miglia.com/products/video/director2/), which
This will set you back the equivalent of $544 CDN, according to their
website.
works fine feeding VHS tapes into iMovie and Final Cut Express, but it
kept burning out (repaired several times on warranty) until I got an
AC
adapter for it (lesson: don't trust FireWire power alone, even if the
No disrespect intended, but my video work has definitely been on a
budget. i bought the Dazzle Hollywood Bridge Analog to DV converter a
couple of years ago. I've never burned out an AC adapter, and it has
worked flawlessly with iMovie and Final Cut, both on the OS9 and the
OS X side, though it was flaky on the OS X side initially, something I
did fixed it and it transfers perfectly.
One thing to remember before shelling out money. A better DV converter
cannot make the source video better than it originally was. No silk
purse from a sow's ear, so to speak.
Bottom line, get the best you can get for the bucks you can afford.
But I wouldn't shy away from a Dazzle Hollywood bridge if your budget
is $100 or less.
You can also check capture cards available on www.vcdhelp.com
But do avoid like the plague the cheaper boxes such as the Dazzle,
Pyro, etc. analog-to-digital converters, and get FireWire not USB (the
latter is not fast enough). Check out the Apple iMovie or Final Cut
Express discussion forums
I can only say that if you can afford over $500 to transfer your old
video tapes, you're probably better off doing so. Rather than spend
that much money, it may be more cost effective to pay someone to
transfer your tapes.
Tom
No, see, the Miglia can actually take power from the FireWire cable,
and thus doesn't need an AC adapter, supposedly. But when I powered it
that way, I never got more than a few weeks' use out of the box before
it would drop dead on me. Miglia always fixed it for free on warranty,
but they finally suggested I get an AC adapter to take power from the
wall instead of the Mac's FireWire port, so I did, and all was well
after that. So, I don't trust FireWire power alone.
The whole idea with these analog/digital converter boxes, for me
anyway, is to have the flexibility to move video in and out of the Mac
from various sources and to also use a TV as a monitor for editing etc.
at the same time, not just to digitize a few old tapes. I am editing
and creating digital video movies for various purposes, and these boxes
allow you to acquire video from a variety of analog sources. On the
Apple DV forums I mentioned in my earlier post, you can do a search on
such converters as the Hollywood Dazzle, Pyro, etc. and see people
complaining about poor (washed-out) colors, blurry pictures, digital
artifacts, and other flaws in the converted video from these less
expensive devices. If you are using such a box and it works well for
your purposes then you are home free. But I wonder if you were to
compare its output to the DV produced by a Miglia or Canopus whether
you would be as satisfied, when you see what is possible with a better
box. Plus, if you have a bad original tape, something like the Canopus
300 can take the snow, jitters, dropouts, and misaligned frames in old
analog video and fix it in many cases, with features likeTBC
(timecode-based correction). And my old Hi-8 family tapes (some showing
relatives who are no longer alive) are too precious to me anyway to
trust to some anonymous character in a shop that converts tapes to DV,
charging by the foot.
Bottom line (pun), there ain't no free lunch. How badly you want or
need high quality converted video determines how wide you open your
wallet (and I never paid nearly what you quoted, by the way. Watch for
deals, or buy 2nd-hand on Ebay).
Tom
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