How Do I Get The Video Into My Macintosh ?
Apple's QuickTime and iMovie software take care of most of the details for TD Video.
The old fashioned way is to use hardware called a "frame grabber" to capture analog video frame by frame and digitize it. TD Video uses Apple's QuickTime software to access a QuickTime compatible frame grabber to accomplish this. Frame grabbers capture composite, S-Video, and component analog video standards. The result is a QuickTime movie of each play that gets stored on a hard drive. As you might guess, these movie files are huge. They are often compressed as they are digitized to save disk space. Some frame grabbers use special compression hardware to make this feasible. The quality of the video that you capture depends on the quality of the frame grabber that you purchase, and the video compression scheme used to store the digitized video.
TD Video prefers an alternative scheme that uses digital video cameras and something Apple calls FireWire. The benefit of this method is higher video quality.
Digital Video camcorders actually record video on their tapes in a compressed digital format. Most of these DV camcorders have a serial port that supports an IEEE standard called IEEE 1394. Apple pioneered this standard and they call it "FireWire". Sony supports it in their camcorders, and they call it "iLink". Canon, JVC, and Panasonic also support it. Using FireWire, you can download a copy of video from your digital camcorder into your computer without using a framegrabber. The advantage is that the video on your hard drive has the same quality as the video in your camera. There's no generation loss. Try "www.apple.com/firewire" for more information on "FireWire".
So, if you have a Mac with factory installed FireWire ports, and a digital camcorder that supports FireWire (or iLink or IEEE 1394), you can download original quality digital video from the camcorder into your Mac. QuickTime handles decompressing the video to display it on your computer screen without additional hardware.
A hybrid approach is also available. Suppose you don't have a digital camcorder. You can purchase a box called a Media Converter. This box basically converts between the digital (FireWire) and analog (VHS, SVHS) worlds. You can supply it with composite or S-Video analog video, and it provides a DV digital stream on FireWire for your computer to use. It functions like a frame grabber in a box. The media converter shown below is a Canopus ADVC-100. Canopus currently manufactures the ADVC-110, which looks the same only it is white. Canopus is now owned by Thomson Green Valley.
Media converters also work in the reverse direction. You can transmit DV video to it over FireWire, and it converts the video to analog (composite and S-Video) so you can feed that to a VCR or a projector. The picture below shows the back side of a Canopus ADVC-100, where the output jacks are.
DV Video (video downloaded from a digital camcorder over FireWire) takes up about 3.5 megabytes of disk space per second. That's 210 megabytes per minute, or 12.6 gigabytes per hour. A single camera high school game (40 minutes of video) takes up about 8 gigabytes of disk space.
High Definition
High definition is here. If you're interested in High Definition video, you'll want to capture it with Apple's iMovie version 8 that comes with iLife 09. The new iMovie captures "Full Size" high definition video (1920 x 1080 resolution). It also can capture HD in "Large Size" (960 x 540 resolution). This clever Large Size lets you capture video that you can view on most displays. 960 x 540 also fits on a standard XGA (1024 x 768) projector. It has about 50% more pixels than standard definition (720 x 480 resolution) and takes up about 50% more disk space. It looks great. Camcorders that record high definition use the HDV Tape format or AVCHD format on hard drives and flash drives.
iMovie stores high definition video in the Apple Intermediate Codec format. This format has very little compression and works great for playback - especially when playing video backwards. The Apple Intermediate Codec is not supported by QuickTime for Windows, so you will need a Macintosh computer to view high definition video.
iMovie version 8 requires an Intel-based Mac, Power Mac G5 (dual 2.0GHz or faster), or iMac G5 (1.9GHz or faster). An Intel based Mac is required to capture AVCHD video.
Click here to see Apple's list of camcorders supported by iMovie 8.
HDV Tape Camcorders
The first high definition camcorders used miniDV tape to store high definition video in the MPEG2 format. These HDV high definition camcorders usually also capture standard definition video in the standard DV format. They transfer video to your Macintosh using FireWire.
You can capture standard definition from these camcorders with TD Video directly. You can capture high definition video from these cameras using Apple's iMovie version 7 and iMovie version 8 software. iMovie 7 came with iLife 08 and iMovie 8 came with iLife 09, so the version numbering is somewhat confusing. TD Video can import video clips from these two versions of iMovie. You will want to use iMovie 8 from iLife 09.
Hard Drive and Flash Drive Camcorders
If you have shopped for a camcorder recently - you have noticed lots of hard drive and flash drive video camcorders. In fact, there's not much selection out there for miniDV camcorders anymore. These hard drive and flash drive camcorders record standard definition and high definition video. Hard drive and flash drive camcorders usually transfer video to your Macintosh using their USB2 ports. They don't support live capture of video at a game. TD Video can import their clips after they are captured by iMovie version 8.
Standard definition is usually recorded in the MPEG2 format. iMovie 7 & 8 install some software that QuickTime uses to display MPEG2 video. MPEG2 video plays back very nicely with this software installed. You'll need to install iLife 08 or iLife 09 on all the Macs that you want to watch MPEG2 video on. MPEG2 is not supported by QuickTime for Windows and will not work with TD Video Viewer for Windows.
High definition is in the AVCHD format. You'll need an Intel based Mac to capture this. iMovie will actually store it in the Apple Intermediate Codec format. Because of this format conversion, capturing high definition video from a hard drive or flash drive camcorder takes much longer than you might expect. Capturing 45 minutes of AVCHD video on a 2.66 gigahertz Intel core Duo processor based MacBook Pro can take 50 minutes.
How Do I Get The Video Out of My Macintosh ?
TD Video provides several ways to view your captured video:
