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Capture cards

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I'm about to start my own SW LD transfer. I will be using my iMac, so I would need an external FireWire or USB 2.0 capture card. (At least I'm assuming that.)

My LD player has digital optical out so my card would need that input.

Any suggestions on what capture card I should get?
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I'm looking into the Canopus ADVC-110 as it's under $250.

There is a trick to turning off the macro protection with it too.

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If you have a DV camcorder, you could try to use it as your A->D converter. Granted, the Canopus would arguably give you slightly better captures. But, you're going to be capturing in the DV (lossy) format either way. I would definitely see if you could borrow a Canopus from someone a compare it to a DV camcorder's results. My point being, if you're not capturing with a dedicated card (like in a PowerMac or some windows box) that can capture with an uncompressed lossless codec (not DV), it might not make sense to buy something like the Canopus. Might save you some money...

Also, there's no macro protection on laserdiscs, AFAIK.

You can go about your business. Move along, move along.

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Originally posted by: MoveAlong
... uncompressed lossless codec...
I assume you mean either:
uncompressed (e.g. RGB)
compressed with a lossless codec (e.g. huffyuv - don't know an equivalent for macs)

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Originally posted by: Moth3r
Originally posted by: MoveAlong
... uncompressed lossless codec...
I assume you mean either:
uncompressed (e.g. RGB)
compressed with a lossless codec (e.g. huffyuv - don't know an equivalent for macs)


Your assumption is correct. That is what I meant to write.

You can go about your business. Move along, move along.

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So is there any way that I could get uncompressed video onto my iMac from my LDs?
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When I was looking for a decent capture device some years ago I did look at getting a DV camcorder but throwing the idea around on some boards came to the conclusion that a dedicated analogue to/from DV device would be much better than getting a DV camcorder that has passthrough as an added option, for two reasons; a dedicated device would generally have better digitising/compression than a DV camcorder, and if you use the DV camcorder's input/output ports a lot they could get damaged as they're not designed to be in heavy use like a dedicated capture device.

I ended up getting a Canopus ADVC-100 which I've been very happy with, I would have liked to get better hardware that can capture at the same quality but to uncompressed/lossless compressed video but back then high quality capture devices were expensive (I paid £275 for my ADVC-100) and so was the harddrive space needed to deal with hours of uncompressed/lossless compressed video.

I do now have a DV camcorder with DV passthrough but haven't really done any quality tests against my ADVC-100.
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