digitize betacam into iMac?

[Mark D’agostino]

We use the DAC15 DV/Analog from Digital Video. It controls our BetaSP deck nicely. If you read my post below yours you’ll see that it only seems to support “drop-frame” editing. We edit “non-drop frame” and this is a problem. However, If you edit in “drop frame” mode this may be the box for you. It passes through YUV component, composite, dv, s-video and unbalanced audio, (2channels).

Mark D’Agostino
http://www.synergeticproductions.com

[Walter Biscardi]

[Jason Brown] “I know I’ve heard a bunch about the AJA Kona options…but they all seem to be PCI based cards, and I don’t think this machine can take a PCI card.

Is there some sort of firewire breakout I/O box that I could utilize?”

AJA Io series is what you want if you want to edit in Uncompressed SD. The full Io features both Analog and Digital I/O while the Io LA features just Analog I/O.

[Jason Brown] ”
How would I go about controlling the beta deck?”

RS-422 from the Io to the Deck.

You’ll want at least an external FW-800 RAID to edit with, that will be plenty fast enough to edit DV to uncompressed SD on an iMac.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Shane Ross]

HOWEVER….and this is a BIG however…

The iMac might sport two firewire ports, but it only has (like ALL Macs) ONE firewire bus. Meaning that if you connect your AJA I/O (the recommended device for this…thumbs up here too) and you connect a firewire drive to the other firewire port…both devices are on the SAME bus, meaning that you might get dropped frames and not be able to capture this footage.

An iMac is not ideal for this workflow. You’re an Avid guy…would you put MEDIA COMPOSER on an iMac and expect it to work well?

Gotta get a pro machine for this. MacBook Pro, or MacPro…those would work well.

Or work with DV.

Shane

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[Mark D’agostino]

These forums are amazing. I posted my answer which is a low cost less than ideal solution. Then Walter and Shane respond with much better and probably very obvious solutions. I’m a DP having to learn a lot about the editing side. We have two FCP rooms one is the top line. Our editor rules that. I work in the iMac room. I may not be the best one to figure out how to build this room but with a lot of research and the added benefit of having you guys to listen to I know we’ll get the best out of the iMac till the day for the upgrade comes.
Thanks!

Mark D’Agostino
http://www.synergeticproductions.com

[Trent Whittington]

Hello,
I know this thread is quite old but I have just been researching to whether the AJA IoHD will work with my new 3.06Ghz iMac and after many dead ends I ended up speaking to a local distributor and was told it will work quite well IF you can handle temporary storage on the internal Harddrive. As Shane mentioned earlier they only use one Bus so the only option is to capture internally and then remove the IoHD and connect it to an external harddrive as you normally would. I should also mention he suggested capturing prores because of the lower file size hence more room for footage.

Trent Whittington (Student) – Currently doing Associate Degree in Digital Television