System Requirements
- A Digital Camcorder with a FireWire port - or - a VCR / DVD player and a Media Converter and a FireWire cable. Hard drive and flash drive camcorders are also supported using Apple's iMovie 7 or iMovie 8 software. Click here to see Apple's list of camcorders supported by iMovie 8.
Camcorders come from Sony, Canon, Panasonic or JVC.
FireWire ports are also called iLink or IEEE 1394 ports.
Media Converters are described below.
- A PowerPC or Intel based Apple Macintosh computer with an XGA (1024 x 768) or higher resolution display.
A G4 or newer Mac is preferred. TD Video is a Macintosh Universal application that runs equally well on PowerPC or Intel based Macintosh computers.
TD Video requires Mac OS X v10.4.0 or newer.
- 512 Megabytes of RAM.
QuickTime software from Apple.
QuickTime 7.x is preferred. All Macs running Mac OS X have QuickTime installed. You can download the latest version of QuickTime for free from "www.apple.com/quicktime".
- Lots of fast disk space.
A high school game can be captured in about 40 minutes of video. That requires around 8 gigabytes of disk space to store. If you use 2 cameras, that's 16 gigabytes per game. You can use internal drives or external FireWire drives (7200 rpm or faster). Most TD Video customers use external FireWire drives to provide the disk space they need (120 to 250 gigabytes). Minitower Macs can accomodate multiple internal drives, which are faster than FireWire drives.
- One available USB port to plug our copy protection device into.
Optional Hardware
Media Converters
These devices have a FireWire port and convert composite video (VHS) and S-Video (SVHS) to digital video (DV). You can use an analog camcorder with a media converter. You probably get analog scout tapes or DVDs from your opponents that will need to be converted. Some digital camcorders will do this for you too. Media converters also convert digital video to analog in case you want to create VHS or SVHS tapes.
Media converters are available from several manufacturers. BW Software has tested the Canopus ADVC-100, the Canopus ADVC-110, the Formac Studio (www.formac.com), Sony's DVMC-DA2, and Dazzle's Hollywood DV-Bridge (www.dazzle.com).
The Canopus ADVC-110 simply works well and is our current choice for new purchases. It looks like the Canopus ADVC-100 pictured below, except that it is white in color.
ShuttlePro and ShuttleXpress
These USB devices are produced by Contour Design. They have several programmable keys and a jog shuttle that can be configured to operate TD Video. TD Video comes with a settings file to configure a ShuttlePro or ShuttleXpress. Check them out at www.contourdesign.com.
The ShuttlePro controls TD Video using the same keystrokes that you can send from your Mac keyboard. You can put labels in the ShuttlePro's programmable keys. Its easier to train a new TD Video user when the keys are labeled with the functions they need to use. A ShuttlePro is also handy if you have a laptop that requires you to use a function key to do a page up or a page down. The current ShuttlePro is black and has 15 buttons.
The ShuttleXpress has the same jog shuttle, 5 buttons and costs half as much. You can turn the disk in the center to watch video frame by frame. You can twist the black ring to watch video in forward motion with six levels of slow motion, or twist it counter clockwise to reverse the video.
