Import via Elgato Video Capture or DV Passthru

iMovie 9 will NOT accept a signal from an analogue to digital converter, only from a digital camera.

If it will accept the signal from your DV camera with passthru you are in luck!

If not you will have to use iMovie 6 for this. If you don't have it already you will need to buy iLife 6 from eBay.

I am not seeing any difference.

If you get the elGato, I would spend a few dollars more and get the ElGato EyeTV Hybrid. in addition to analog capture through USB, it also serves as a High Definition DVR so you can watch and record TV shows.

I have imported 8MM tapes through a Digital 8 passthrough into iMovie and also VHS tapes through the elGato.

With the ElGato EyeTV Hybrid, I import as MPEG2, then convert to Apple Intermediate Codec (and deinterlace) using MPEG Streamclip.

With the import through DV Digital 8, I also have to deinterlace using MPEG Streamclip. The quality is no better, but the files sizes are bigger.

The new ElGato you mention has the advantage of importing as h.264 rather than MPEG2. This should be fine for most purposes, but you can always convert the h.264 to AIC if you need to.

1) I looked at the elGato EyeTV hybrid and it only seems to have a RG-6 Cable Wire input, no RCA >Video or S-Video inputs. How would I record with that? I must be missing something.

EyetV Hybrid has coax cable, RCA composite video, and S-Video inputs.

2) You and Steve Mullen have provided a lot of help but I'm still learning the ins and out of video >codecs. I understand from Steve's book that for iM09 we need to deinterlace DV using Slipstream. >Is MPEG-2 or h.264 interlaced also. Does iM09 accept h.264 but not MPEG-2? Is that why there is >an advantage to importing as h.264? When an why would I want to convert h.264 to AIC which >seems to have much bigger files? In most cases I plan to export my clips to iM09 and then the >resulting movies to iDVD.

I don't have Steve's book, so you can ask him about anything he is recommending out of the mainstream.

iMovie can handle h.264, and it should be fine in 640x480. However, it is a highly compressed format. Apple Intermediate Codec basically "un-compresses" it into full frames. When you start trying to do long movies, or to do high definition in h.264, or to do effects like slow motion or image stabilization in h.264, you will run into trouble. You will get much better results in AIC.

My best advice. Use h.264, and if you are satisfied, stick with it. You can always go to AIC.

iMovie does not handle MPEG2 except for directly from a list of supported camcorders.

I think that DV and AIC have minimal compression. They are in the same order of magnitude of compression.

MPEG2 is an interesting codec, in that the audio compression and the video compression are mixed up together in the stream. There is no audio portion of a frame. There are audio packets and then some video packets, and the player resolves these and puts them back in sync. It is used for digital TV and for DVD.

MPEG4 started out as a low bitrate codec, but has expanded over time to handle high bitrates and high quality.

For much better info, check Wikipedia.

Personally, I always convert to AIC - except for DV. But for certain applications, you can edit in h.264 and get good results. You will almost always share your final movie in h.264. THe only exception is if you are sending your project to DVD, in which case iDVD will accept AIC or DV or h.264. (and convert it to MPEG2). Another exception is if you are burning to BluRay via TOAST. In this case, you can share your movie in AIC, and let Toast do the conversion to h.264.

Message was edited by: AppleMan1958

The outboard encoder is mainly useful for people with older Macs, like the G4 and G5. They don't have the processor speed or the graphics processor to do it inboard. With an Intel Mac, inboard works fine. You can import from the EyeTV Hybrid while surfing the web, word processing, etc. The only time you might want to have it outboard is if you wanted to be using another graphics intensive application at the same time you are importing. For example, if you wanted to render an iMovie Project at the same time you are importing to EyeTV. Most people don't need this.