We bought a new iMac last year for the Video Lab at IDMNYU (the Integrated Design & Media program at New York University). This iMac has an M1 chip, a couple of USB-C ports, and is running the latest version of macOS Catalina.
We were using a Canopus ADVC-100 for video capture but the latest macOS no longer supports DV firewire capture, so the Canopus box stopped working.
Does anyone have suggestions for analog video capture with this setup? What’s everyone using these days?
it may not be the best quality option, but for interim use you could get a basic usb analog capture card (such as this) which just shows up on your system as a webcam. they seem to work ok as long as you don’t need to do a lot of post processing on the images (they do add compression).
ultimately it seems that getting a decent HDMI capture card and a good upscaler is the best solution going forward since there seem to be more folks on the job making hdmi capture work on newer machines. i personally use a v4ex mixer to upscale to hdmi but there are a bunch of standalone ones as well. (side note, im still on mac os mojave for related reasons but i have older hardware so can get away with it.) i believe some of them are listed in the wiki section of this forum. additionally there may be more capture devices listed there as well.
We recently got this cheaper ClearClick USBC capture device and its worked surprisingly well. Huge relief after after having so many issues with all of our more expensive Black Magic gear and losing support also for Canopus firewire device:
I also used that Canopus ADVC-100 before, now I use a standalone capture device and load the files to my PC, and I’m super happy with that route.
This is what I got:
Composite to HDMI scaler
Atomos Ninja
The Atomos record ProRes / AVID format files to a removable HD, which you can plug into your computer via USB3
This has as effect that recording is as easy as pushing a button and then forgetting it. For me this results in a less forced recording situation, where everything ‘has to be perfect’.
The “should this be recorded?” barrier is much lower.
The recorder is portable and has a screen to preview the video.
well, that is still a work in progress.
I bought an AnalogWay UltraVIO 2nd hand for cheap, but the DVI to HDMI cable route does not yet get recognised by the Atomos Ninja 2. I am going to get a Blackmagic Micro converter (SDI to HDMI) , because the SDI output of that scaler gives me good results.
Maybe this route: Black Magic Mini Converter Analog to SDI (+ that Micro Converter, if you need it) is a good idea for you.
I use a super cheap analog to HDMI converter as a temporary backup, (It only works with the 720p setting)
but that one is pretty crappy, as it distorts the video signal quite a bit.
(with too wide and pronounced edges and a sort of interlacing I can’t seem to de-interlace)
…i like the generic HDMI-to-USB dongle more as it is faster (better for live-situations) and i think the resulting image is more pleasing to me…i have 6 or 7 of the generic ones from different sources and they were all good…
