Old video to your Mac

It may seem as though it should be easy to get the videos off of your old video camera or vhs recorder and put it right into your Mac. Well, it is providing you have an old dv tape camcorder that has firewire. You can import the video straight to iMovie and then do with it as you please. But what if you want to digitize some old vhs tapes? or get video off of a camcorder that uses mini dvds? Not an easy, or all that cheap thing to get done. But there are definitely affordable methods of doing so.

The first solution you could come up with would be a simple conversion box that converts, analog (rgb and s video) and USB inputs to firewire. This is a decent solution, although not very cheap, the quality is great, and you can import directly to iMovie with it. The price tag is around $250 for such a device.

The second and preferable choice is Elgato’s EyeTV 250 plus. This is not only a converter but also a tv tuner. The TV tuner enables you to watch and record analog or even high definition cable directly on your Mac. Which you can then export to any iLife application, Quicktime, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV or a host of other destinations. The software that Elgato ships it’s products with is called EyeTV. Currently in version 3, you will find this a rather intuitive, powerful and flexible piece of software. The price tag is not all that much less then a simple converter box,  however it is far from just a converter box. Right now it is available directly from Elgato at a tidy sum of 199.00.

So how does one use the EyeTV? You will need either an s-video or RGB cables to connect your analog source to the EyeTV box with it’s included adapter cable. The EyeTV box connects to your Mac with USB 2.0. (Unfortunately you cannot use the box if you do not have USB 2.0 ports on your computer.) First thing you need to do is install the software by dragging and dropping it’s icon, from the included CD, into your Application folder’s icon in the same window. Then navigate to your Application folder and double click the EyeTV icon to launch the program. Plug the EyeTV’s USB cable directly into your Mac (a non-powered USB hub will not work.) You will be prompted to accept the end user license agreement, then tell the software what Elgato hardware you have from their drop-down menu. It will ask you how you want to use the product, make your choice then click next. Another prompt will ask you for your Titan TV username and password (Titan TV is an online service that grabs programming schedules based on your local cable company. Which you then use to schedule TV show recording with EyeTV’s software.). After all of the prompts you are given a window for live tv, and another window which is called EyeTV programs. This is the center of the EyeTV software, where your Titan TV schedule and recorded programs library lives.

For the purpose of this blog, I am focusing on getting old video from older media types imported. So for this to happen you need to go to the controls menu at the top of the screen on the menu bar. From there, select ‘composite video’ from the bottom of the menu. This changes the input on the EyeTV hardware from cable to RGB mode (select s-video from the controls menu if your video device has that option.). Then press play on your device to see if the video is coming through ok. Once the video signal looks, and sounds good,  simply go to the controller window which by default sits at the top right of your screen and click the EyeTV button to begin recording. Finally push play on your video device once again (rewind to the beginning if necessary). EyeTV is now pulling the audio and video into it’s program windows ‘Recordings’ library. The software does not automatically stop when your video does, so when the video is done playing click the EyeTV button on the controller again to stop the software from recording.

Once you get the video fully recorded you have many options available to you, which is where it’s power and flexibility comes in. From here you select a video and you can have the software export into all iLife application formats, several different video formats, iPod/iPhone formats and Quicktime formats. You can also burn the recordings directly to DVD or CD from Toast which is included in the software. Exporting for use on the web in various popular formats is supported as well. When all of that’s done you can plug in your cable tv to the box or watch over the air HDTV shows and record them as well.

I am not usually one to pimp products, but this one is all too worthy of my praise. Not to mention the fact that it provided me the means to help out a client by getting old wedding videos off of one of those, unbelievable disasters of a recording medium, mini dv camcorders. The project was a huge success, so much so that I now have my girlfriend digitizing old video tapes in the same exact manor. Nice job Elgato, you have the rare DandyMac seal of approval.

Maconomics

As it stands in our current economic climate here in the good `ol US of A, we are almost all strapped for cash. I would guess that there are a bunch of us out there that would really like to get a new Mac with a bigger hard drive that might even be faster, I mean really who wouldn’t? Trouble with that is that a new Mac is pretty expensive, which is not easy to swing these days. What is one to do?

Well, I will tell you exactly what you can do, and I do this all day every day for people just like you. The most affordable way of achieving the bigger hard drive and more speed is to upgrade what you already have. This can be done for a fraction of the cost of a new computer. In many cases it will run about $300-400. Most people I talk to are surprised that it can even be done, let alone how much cheaper it is than buying a new Mac.

So what can be done to an older Mac? The first thing you most likely want is the bigger hard drive. Having more room for all of your files, music, movies, photos, applications and everything you download is always a good thing. Depending on what type of Mac you have, you can go as high as 1 terabyte, which is a LARGE amount of storage space. To give you an idea of how much it would cost to upgrade the hard drive in your older (or even newer) Mac, it would cost about $50 for an 80-gigabyte drive and up to $100 for a 500-gigabyte drive for a Mac laptop, depending on the model. If you have a desktop Mac it can be an even cheaper upgrade and you can add much more space: up to 1 terabyte for as little as $119. Installation should run about $100 or less depending on what kind of Mac you own. So for less than around $200 you can have a much larger hard drive for storage. (prices gathered from http://www.otherworldcomputing.com )

The next thing you can do to give that old Mac some new life is upgrade your RAM. RAM stands for random access memory and it serves two basic functions. The first is it allows you to open more applications at the same time without bogging down your workflow. The second thing it does is add more speed to the Mac. The two in conjunction really makes a huge difference in your Mac’s performance. Again, this is a rather cheap investment that really pays off. For example if you have an iBook G4 (purchased in late 2004) you can max out your RAM to 1.25 gigabytes for $50 (OWC), if you have a 2.4ghz MacBook Pro (late 2007-early 2008) you can max our your RAM to 4 gigabytes for $60 (OWC). Installation on most Macs is very simple and you can find instructions at otherworldcomputing.com as well. I cannot recommend this upgrade strongly enough, you will love your old Mac all over again!

The final thing I can recommend to spruce up the old Mac is to upgrade the system software. The system software is how your computer runs, it’s also what gives your computer more functionality and features.  This upgrade can be a bit more of a challenge because not all Macs can be upgraded to the latest operating system from Apple (OSX 10.5 Leopard). To make things more challenging it is rather difficult to find the operating systems prior to the latest. If your Mac is under ten years old, odds are you can run up to OSX 10.4 Tiger. (Because this is an older operating system it is more costly than the latest operating system. I ran a Google search for it and found this to be the cheapest: (OS X 10.4), although I do not know about the reliability of the source.) If you have a Mac that has an 867 mhz processor or greater and at least 512mb of RAM ( you can find out what processor speed and how mach RAM you have by clicking the little Apple menu in the upper left corner of your desktop, then click ‘About This Mac’) you can upgrade to the latest from Apple OS X 10.5 Leopard for about $129. I do not recommend doing this yourself unless you really know what you are doing,  have done it before, and have backed up your data.

Before you go running out and buying these products it is essential that you know what kind of Mac you have and how far it can be upgraded. There are many variables involved in picking the right parts to upgrade to. That said, I recommend talking to someone like DandyMac (shameless self-plug!) who is a certified Apple Technician and Consultant before making purchases. Buying the wrong parts and trying to install them can be disappointing and even dangerous.

So for now save yourself some cash in these hard times and upgrade that older Mac. You will make you and it much happier by doing so. In these trying Maconomic times you can extend the life of your older Mac with very little expense and start saving for your next new mac at the same time. As a small hint to those of you who can actually afford to get a new Mac, I would strongly suggest that you hold off until the next round of hardware updates are released before you buy a laptop. The desktops are the way to go right now if you are considering buying new.

UPDATE: During my nromal morning scouring of my favorite mac news sites I stumbled upon this article from Macworld .com:    Opinon: Which is better for your business, a Mac or a PC? This guy has his own take on the economic times we are in and how his choice of computer helped his company. Perhaps a bit off the topic but it’s still great!