Video capture for a G5?

[guitar man]

Hi

I have a dual processor g5 Powermac tower running Leopard 10.5.8 and I've got a large box of VHS tapes, old family movies etc I need to capture to digital.

Does anybody know what the best not-too-expensive device for this would be? I've looked around the web and haven't found a whole lot, and some I've found are intel Mac only

Thanks

[freshwest]

1. I'm not sure about your Mac, but I use Elgato from Apple although I'm sure it's available elsewhere.

I got it a couple of years ago to convert VHS tapes my kid had plus others to QuickTime or mp4 format. I keep them on an external hard drive and on disks.

It is simple, works out of the box as it should. Just be sure to be careful in naming said video before you convert it to mp4. You can trim the beginning or end off, commercials, etc.

I've done hundreds of hours. I don't have much gig but you can burn the movies or whatever it was on DVD R-M 4.7gig disks, or even 700MB disks if the material is very short. Then delete it from your hard drive to allow space to make more.

Here's a link to it and I suspect it'll work for you:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/TW129LL/A

Good luck and have a great time digitizing.

[guitar man]

2. Thanks for the link

Unfortunately it won't work with my machine as it requires an intel processor Mac to run on.

I love Mac computers but I'm pretty damn unhappy with the screw job those of us with machines that are a little older are getting. A lot of perfectly good fast and powerful not to mention expensive macs are getting shut out so they can sell new machines. That's not the apple computer company as I knew it

[freshwest]

3. Sorry. Haven't been able to find a Mac compatible option from other vendors.

They are Windows only, in my experience. In the past I tried VHS/DVD recorder combos, but they never worked. It takes a long time to do this process so naturally it would have to be your own machine at home to do it. Radio Shack has devices, but only work on Windows.

I was afraid G-5 might not be compatible, but wasn't sure how far that operating system went as I had an older Mac, an almond with a floppy drive, then a 'it comes in colors' Macs. All recycles I got from my friends who started me with Macs.

I only buy refurbished Mac products, and five years ago I got my current iMac. I then transferred from my older Mac with Leopard on it for a long time, so I thought that was what you had.

I found more links but they don't specify Leopard or G5. I wish I had another solution for you, that's all that I know. Sorry.

[guitar man]

4. No problem

Not your fault.

It's the hardware that they are shutting out. When they changed the architecture from Powermac to intel they just crapped all over anybody with an older machine.

Like you, I acquired my macs second hand, I could never have afforded what I have when they were brand new. I do know if I had spent around $3500 for this tower I have in '06 with all its bells and whistles only to be told it was being tossed aside as far as software development goes, I'd be royally pissed.

[freshwest]

5. I hate to tell you to buy anything, but:

This one is about $1K and can do all you want, much newer than mine with 2X the memory:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC309LL/A

Comcast set me up and the guy went into the System Preferences pane to get my Internet going and checked the speed with some device he had. His jaw dropped and he just couldn't stop talking about it. This is the fastest machine I've ever had.

I'm really glad you didn't spend those thousands of dollars before they changed over. They don't encourage one to use the older things, but my repair tech says he can squeeze in 1 or 2 TB in a new hard drive when this one fails again.

To convert your tapes you are going to need quite a bit of memory. I still don't keep my movies and videos on the iMac, I keep it on externals that are plugged in with a hub.

I have an external that isn't USB but Apple sold me an adapter. My iMac still has older style ports. But the one in the link, and all the ones that will follow is strictly USB. And a lot of things are going to the mini-USB which is like the connection on some cellphones.

If you change over, what type of external storage does your current system have? If it's floppies, you are in deep trouble transferring. But you can migrate through your System Preferences pane with an Ethernet cable.

But perhaps another member knows a solution to this problem. I appears google doesn't know a thing about it, though.

[guitar man]

6. Lol, no floppies

My machine was introduced in October of '05 and it wasn't discontinued until August of '06. It's got 8gb of ram and dual 500gb SATA drives. It'll make mincemeat out of most new windows computers and will dust a lot of intel iMacs.

The only problem is the shutting out of PowerPC architecture while there are still a lot of perfectly good machines capable of running for years. I've got a 9 year old dual processor g4 tower that still runs like a bat out of hell. Damn shame there's no software support

[freshwest]

7. No, there really isn't. I'm shutting down out of this except for a few things I do often.