Analog Capture Device
Pavan Outlaw
I still capture video from analog tape. With Catalina, my workhorse Canopus AVDC 110 no longer works. So I got the Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle. That doesn't work either. Are there any affordable (under $300) analog-to-digital capture devices on the market that still work with current Macs? I'd rather not keep buying and returning them. I have a 2018 Mac mini, so ideally I'd like something that connects via Thunderbolt 3. (I haven't been able to find any, though.)
Unfortunately, the model I have is the USB model. While Blackmagic claimed it would work with Macs, that's evidently not true with Catalina. When I got the USB model, I hadn't realized they had a Thunderbolt 2 version. I was thinking of getting that one, but then I read on some forums that the TB version had issues functioning on Macs that only had TB 3. So rather than go down that same path, I ordered the VidBox.
Correct. The device wouldn't show up in any software, not even Blackmagic's own. Evidently, the drivers (which were the latest downloaded from Blackmagic's site) didn't make a difference. I've heard from different people that it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't depending on your system. My device was the USB 3 version. Perhaps the Thunderbolt 2 version (for which I'd need an adapter cable) might work, but for how long? Since the Intensity was released in 2014, it could be reaching its end-of-life. The VidBox was just updated this year, so hopefully there won't be issues.
The VidBox worked perfectly for me. I captured 4 hours of video from an old 8mm camcorder with no problems. But you have to use the capture software that comes with VidBox. No native Mac apps will recognize it. The VidBox software is really basic, but it did the job. After it was captured I could bring it into FCPX and tweak it.
over the years I have had a bunch of different cards -
Canopus ADC110DV analog video to firewire - 10+ years ago
2x BM intensity Pro has served me well since 2010 with vdmx making my own hd mixer with 1frame latency only in 720p60 and 1-2 frames in 1080p30. First in a Mac Pro and later with laptops and Sonnet echo express2 2 pcie thunderbolt case. Pretty nice setup back then. I had a 11" macbook air with vdmx working as mixer. It handled 720p fine without loosing frames. good times :-)
In my experience all of the Magewell cards deliver great capture quality. The issues I had with the 4K version dealt with latency between machines (live mixing multiple VJ machines). You can also use a standalone external capture device that can record 1080p HD as well as break HDCP issues if any might arise. Could you describe more of what you intend to capture and at what resolution?
Hi Bill,
To save some computer resources, I would go with an external capture device. Essentially, a pass thru capture device (push a button, it records to a thumb drive) and your output gets passed through to the projector/monitor, etc.
Something of note: The UVC (USB Capture) devices such as Magewell, iEi, and so on require some CPU power. If your computer is older or limited in resources, this might cause more latency in the capture.
The Elgato device is essentially a dongle that connects to your VCR or camcorder and to a USB 2.0 port on a Windows or Mac computer. On the VCR side, video uses either (a) an S-video output or (b) a yellow RCA connector and audio records in stereo using red & white RCA-jack style connectors.
While the Elgato box contained an installation disk for windows drivers and the capture software, I tend to follow the path of going directly to the source for these kind of installations. I downloaded latest drivers and software from: -capture/support/update-windows. The process I followed was to install the driver file first followed by the software.
At the completion of the software installation, I was prompted to connect the dongle to the USB port. At this point, the installation is completed and the software prompted me to cue up the first video.
Record the entire video contents of the tape as one recording and post-process to split out separate events which happened to be captured on the same tape. For this, I am using other third party software I already own and use for TV editing (VideoRedo TVSuite H.264)
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Give your video new life with Dazzle DVD Recorder HD video capture card! Capture clips from multiple sources with the high-quality video capture device. Then turn them into creative movies you can enjoy on DVD, the web and popular devices.
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With the cabling correctly plugged, VLC (available from the Software Centre) can be used to capture sound and image. You must access the menu Media > Open Capture Device and set the EasyCap device (e.g. /dev/video0) for recording (it can also be set for streaming). The Video For Linux 2 library is usually recommended for the job.
The VLC makers say that recording like this takes the raw stream from the recorded device 'as-is' and that there is nothing to do about it. Not completely true. Take the EasyCap stick e.g., I used it with software from Arcsoft in Windows - I'm sorry - which gave me the choice to record directly to mpeg1 or mpeg2 (also from PAL). The resulting files could be easily cut up and transcoded afterwards. Considering the large transcoding times one would even stick to the original mpeg(2)-format. Anything not to get these ENORMOUS raw avi's which are only viewable with VLC itself.
I've just started transferring all of my VHS tapes with Elgato video capture and now want to edit it using Premiere - I'm a bit concerned about the aspect ratio/size of the finished project - what are the settings that I need to do - if anything different. Thanks!
It's a little tricky cause it's basically old TV standard stuff and you want to make it modern export. Same fps, same dimensions, same pixel ( par ) size, but you can now make it progressive instead of interleaved.
Best is to look for a second hand Grass Valley A/D converter (or a mini dv camera with analog in). It will capture your footage in the best quality possible. This Elgato thing is destroying your footage.
Actually, most VHS footage is already extremely low quality to begin with. You see, the effective horizontal resolution of most VHS footage is only about 270 pixels per picture height. With an aspect ratio of 4:3 NTSC, that would translate to an effective total horizontal resolution of only about 350 to 360 pixels. The vertical resolution is fixed at 480 pixels. Thus, image quality loss when converting from analog VHS to digital is unavoidable due to the resampling of pixel content no matter what. What's worse, the Elgato cannot really keep interlacing. All analog video is interlaced - but cheaper capture devices like the Elgato shoot themselves in the foot by always deinterlacing interlaced footage before they even send it to the PC.
Properly converting VHS to digital will require specialized equipment that's way beyond the scope of PC do-it-yourselfers. This specialized equipment will be much more expensive than even the most expensive of Macs and servers. If the discussion starter MUST do this conversion him/herself using the aforementioned Elgato device, then I would recommend keeping the 640 x 480 resolution, Pixel ratio set to "Square Pixel (1.0)," Field Order set to "None (Progressive scan)," and then exporting the edited result to 320 x 240 resolution (using a 1.0 pixel ratio) or 352 x 240 (using the "NTSC DV (0.9091)" pixel ratio).
I tend to agree wtih Ann Bens. Capturing DV-25 works great. The Intensity Shuttle can offer better capturing options but it requires a TBC. The ADVC devices from Canopus do not. If you want to check the quality you can checkout the video link below
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I did exaggerate the cost of the specialized hardware. Good analog-to-digital capture cards or devices cost a lot more than $100 (which is the current street price of that Elgato device). In fact, more like close to $500 - about what a higher-end discrete graphics card would cost. (A very good analogy is if that Elgato device were like a GeForce GT 1030, then the good, proper capture devices would be more like an RTX 2070 SUPER. Just like the RTX 2070 SUPER is that much more powerful than the GT 1030, the proper Grass Valley card would be better than the Elgato by a very similar margin.)
And when a memory/gaming peripheral company owns Elgato (in this case, Corsair), bringing out analog capture devices that are better than the model it currently sells is a very low priority for that brand.
Specialized equipment only need to be able to capture 4:2:2 or even 4:4:4 in intraframe mode. motionjpeg works great for this and doesn't take up too much bandwidth. Its the 4:2:0 interframe codecs with low bitrate that cause the most damage.
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