Home movies on VHS to iMac for editing/ DVD

Having tried one device unsuccessfully, we're looking for a device that we can use to convert old VHS tapes so we can edit in iPhoto/ Movie and store on DVDs. The one we tried came from the Apple retail store, but the Genius Bar was not able to get it to work. Thanks.

FYI - You can also use an HD VCR with a firewire output. No converter needed as far as I can tell. (I assume because the VCR is HD and is therefore putting out a digital signal?) I also have a giant stack of VHS tapes that I would like to convert to DVD. However, I'm having a problem with the audio. Video imports fine into iMovie '08, but audio is all garbled. Going straight from firewire out of JVC HM-DH40000U VCR into iMovie. If anyone has any suggestions they would be much appreciated.

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I transferred home movies from VHS to DVD. How do I import the data into imovie.

I transferred home movies from VHS to DVD. I can open the data using the DVD Player but I cannot import data into imovie. Any ideas?

Another option is to download the free app MPEG Streamclip from Squared 5 here:
http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html
After loading the DVD on your Mac, drag the icon onto Streamclip's window. From the menu choose File>Export to QuickTime then for Compression select the Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC). Adjust the quality slider from 50% to about 75% - that should give good quality at a reasonable file size. Leave other settings as they are and click on Make Movie. From the next box, choose a name for the file (it will be a .mov file) and a save location (say Desktop).
The saved .mov file can now be imported to an Event and edited if desired in iMovie.
Note that you may be asked to instal a file from Apple. It's named QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback Component for Mac OS X. It's priced at US$19.99 and is available from the US Apple Store here:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/D2187Z/A?
John
Message was edited by: John Cogdell

Which iMac for Editing ACVHD video?

Hello all,
I am a long-time PC user in need of a new computer and thinking of making the switch to an iMac. I have hours of HD video shot on a Canon Vixia HF200 camcorder, and even my high-end work computer bogs down trying to edit HD video.
How much horsepower is recommended in an iMac for editing AVCHD? I know that more is always better, but from a dollars perspective, middle of the road is where I am aiming.

Most Mac OS X editing applications transcode AVCHD to an intermediate format (Apple Intermediate Codec, or ProRes if you were to use Final Cut Studio) for editing, so you don't need that much horsepower (but lots of disk space).
You might be able to edit AVCHD natively using Adobe Premiere or Premiere Elements, in which case a powerful computer would help. It may also be possible to trick Apple's apps into editing AVCHD natively by remuxing to .mov with something like ClipWrap.
I'd say get an iMac as powerful as you can afford (favoring the quad-core over a similarly-priced dual-core configuration), and consider keeping money aside for accessories (e.g. external drives) or extended warranty.

I have my home movies on VHS, what devices are good for putting them on iMovie, all the devices I have seen are PC only

I want to put video from VHS to iMovie what devices work with a Mac? All the ones I have seen are PC only.

Hi
There are many to chose from and at different prices and functions.
I got an CANOPUS ADVC-300 - now named Grass Valley ADVC-300 - but can only be bought secondhanded as it's discontinued.
AND - it's Expensive !
Still to me it's been of 100% value due to it's functions. It can repair broken TimeBase-Code and that means that I can import a LONG VHS tape recorded in EP-mode and with drop-outs.
Cheaper devices = Import will halt at every drop out frames AND Audio will go out of sync.
• Tedious Baby-sittings when Importing (and multiple re-starting Import)
• Audio goes out of sync. Tedious labor to by hand correct this !
Then my A/D-box also came with some rather advanced Picture Enhancing programs/settings.
So in all - I Love it.
BUT Surely there are much cheaper solutions for those that
• makes short VHS Imports
• New VHS tape Without any Drop-outs (less than a Year old)
• Patience of an Angle
OBSERVE ! - If You talk about BOUGHT VHS-tapes as from Disney - FORGET IT - NO A/D-box can break the CopyProtection. And even a theoretical discussion about this is FORBIDDEN in this Forum - as it is a GLOBAL forum and just the discussion is forbidden in countries as Germany etc.
Yours Bengt W

I am trying to make a DVD of my old home movie with a new iMac

I have been un-sucessful at creating a DVD of some older 8mm tapes.
I pick-up the Roxio VHS to DVD capture software.
I connected my Sony Video 8 VCR and captured the 120 min Video.
I am not sure what to do next.
Roxio captured the video, but put it in Quicktime format (.MOV)
Should I import the file into iMovie?
Should I import it into file conversion software?
Do I need a burner Software?
Any help would be appreciated.
Carl
[email protected]

So if the video is now in a .mov file, yes, you can import it into iMovie to edit if you'd like, add titles, or whatever. When finished, please use the export using Quicktime function under Share in file menu and use the highest quality settings you can under Options (depending on the size of your video - is it widescreen (probably not coming from VHS), etc. - you may need to experiment for the best settings. The other options in Share are not as customizable. These are what I use (but that is with video shot in full HD):
When it's done exporting, you will need a burn software to get it on a DVD to play in a DVD player. The best would be iDVD which is part of the retail iLife 09 or 11 suits, available at Amazon, ebay, and other online sellers. Or you can buy Roxio Toast, excellent software, but doesn't have the cool customizable menu options iDVD has. Or there are free options like Burn - just basics.
Edit: is yours one of the brand new iMacs? If so, you don't have a Superdrive/optical drive built in, so you'll need an external burner.

27 inch iMac for editing and After Effects

Hey everyone. I'm a student who does heavy video and After Effects work. Right now my core 2 duo macbook pro is not cutting it when it comes to performance and render times.
Luckily, my budget is around $2200-2300 thanks to money I should have leftover from my college fund (thank you, mom and dad).
I was looking at the MacBook Pro 15 inch until I discovered the 27 inch imacs that are in the library multimedia center. The screen size is great because there's so much space to work with and details come out a lot clearer.
But from a hardware and price perspective, the 27inch imac with a quad core 3.1 ghz intel core i7, 1 tb hdd, and a 2gb AMD Radeon HD 6970m is around $100 LESS than the MacBook Pro with a quad core 2.4 ghz, 750 gb 5400 rpm, and 1 gb 6770m.
The only tradeoff is portability, but given the difference in spec, i'm starting to say its worth it.
I know that a lot of AE is dependant on CPU and lots of RAM per CPU. Upgrading to 16 gb of ram is getting cheaper and cheaper (it also helps that the imac has 4 ram slots). The iMac can actually support 32 gb of ram, so when that becomes available that is another nice plus.
So just doing the math, with 16 gb of ram that would be a 3.1 ghz quad core intel i7 with 4 gb of ram per core. 8gb of ram when upgraded to 32 gb of memory.
I'm not sure what Apple is gonna do with the next iMac refresh, so I will probably wait until then to make a decision.
Does anyone have experience with AE on the 27 inch iMac with similar specs?
Many thanks,
Dan.

Several other drawbacks to the iMac or any other all-in-one computer system:
1) The GPU cannot be upgraded at all (at least not internally). In fact, iMacs cannot have their AMD (formerly ATi) GPUs disabled at all. And Premiere Pro CS5.x supports only NVIDIA CUDA GPUs for MPE GPU acceleration. (The current iMacs cannot be equipped at all with any GPU besides AMD/ATi.) Premiere Pro is thus forced to run in MPE software-only mode, which is much slower than with GPU acceleration.
2) No iMac has any room at all whatsoever for more than one single fast internal hard drive. Unfortunately, the interface that the iMac employs, SATA, is only a half-duplex interface (which means that data transfers can only move in one direction at a time). But video editing requires a disk system that does simultaneous reads and writes - but with only one disk connected only by a half-duplex connection, the system must wait for a given block of read operations to be completed before any writes of a given data can even begin at all. This slows down overall editing and encoding performance substantially.
3) Additional hard drives can be added externally - but the current external hard drive options available for the iMac are either very expensive or very slow. That's because the iMac has absolutely no USB 3.0 or eSATA capability whatsoever. The iMac has only USB 2.0 and Thunderbolt ports - but external Thunderbolt hard drives still cost nearly twice as much money per GB as other external hard drives, and USB 2.0 is limited in sequential transfers to only around 35 MB/s - far slower than the drives themselves are physically capable of (140 to 188 MB/s). Plus, of course, USB 2.0, like SATA, is only half duplex.

Import DVD to iMac for editing

I have a DVD copy of a video recording (not in my possession). From my DVD drive I want to save the content of this DVD copy to my computer. I then want to be able to edit the saved DVD content and burn another DVD of my edited version. This seems like a simple process for iMac, but I have no idea what to do.
Can someone walk me through it?
iMac Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Hello and Welcome to Apple Discussions.
You'll need either:
MacTheRipper and
OpenShiiva
or
Handbrake
to do this.
Let us know if you have any snags.
regards
mrtotes

What is the best device to transfer VHS to iMovie for edit

Currently have a mac pro and would like to edit vhs videos of the family, did try ezecap waste of money only worked on pc and no sound would like to copy direct to imovies

This question comes up a lot. Here is a recent post where I describe some of the options.

I have a iMac - when I burn dvd of my home movies it does not play on other dvd players

When i burn a dvd on my imac - it does not play on other dvd players

Buy iDVD on Disk.
Yes, there are other programs that will put a movie on a DVD. I have tried most of the other substitutes including Toast, Burn, DVD Creator, Wondershare, and others. None of them come anywhere near the ease-of-use and power of iDVD. IDVD is specifically designed to work with iMovie.
http://www.apple.com/findouthow/movies/idvd.html
With iDVD you can easily and quickly create DVDs with menus and graphics almost on the level of what Hollywood can do.
IDVD is easy to get. It is available on disk as part of iLife 11.
IDVD is a wonderful piece of software and well worth the low cost of $40. (works with all Mac OS 10.5 and newer.)
http://www.amazon.com/Apple-MC623Z-A-iLife-VERSION/dp/B003XKRZES/ref=sr_1_1?ie=U
http://dealmac.com/lw/artclick.html?1,527850,1872219

How can I tell if my movie will be too big for a DVD?

Is there a way to see how big your project will be before hitting "burn"? I don't want to spend 30 minutes burning a disc, only to have it say ... sorry ... not enough room.
I have 5 movies (Quicktime at best quality) that total about 9.5 GB.
Right now, I'm just adding up the GB of three of them, and finding that they total only 4.6 GB. So, I assume those three will fit on 1 DVD.
But is there a way in iMovie? i.e., "Show how big iMovie is"
Thanks,
Steve

Yes
As Lennart writes - but mpeg-2 is a quality loss. All DVDs have this in a
varible degree on how hard and in what way the mpeg-2 coding was done.
120 min movie - Yes You'll see the qulity loss encoded with iDVD.
With DVD Studio pro and Compessor You can go as far as DVD/mpeg-2
can offer but to a high price and learning curve.
If You want 100% quality You should deliver on 2 miniDV tapes and play
back via Camera.
Yours Bengt W

Home movie - source is DVD - Can I edit?

I had a video cassette which was of family home movies.
This was put onto a DVD.
I would like somehow to get this information onto my harddrive to edit etc.. via imovie/iDVD .
is this possible?
where do i begin?

For some additional info and background, take a look at these articles:
Converting Video Files
See MacWorld's review of Visual Hub
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macgems/2006/12/visualhub/index.php
VHS to DVD Options
http://www.macworld.com/2004/05/features/fromvhstodvd/index.php
Editing Old Home Videos
http://www.macworld.com/2007/01/secrets/febmac911/index.php
John

Best file format for 8mm home movie conversion

Hi there,
I'm about to get some old 'standard' 8mm home movies from the 60s & 70s converted to DVD as a Christmas gift for my mum.
The transfer company will also supply the footage as files to view/edit on my mac at a later date. I'm a complete iMovie novice so my question is, which file format should I choose?
They're offering AVI, MPEG 4, WMV, .MOV or Pro Res files.
Many thanks in advance for your help...
Jon Howard
PS I'm running iMovie '08 (7.1.4) & OS X 10.6.8 on an intel 13" macbook in the UK (PAL area).

Pro Res in potentially the best, but you would need Final Cut Pro, not iMovie, to edit it.
It is difficult to advise you without knowing the technology they are using. Are they capturing in High Definition progressive or Standard Definition interlaced?
I found a US company that would scan the 8MM at 1080P. They provided the files in Motion JPEG format. This proved to work great in iMovie.
If they are doing Standard Definition, I would say go for DV if they can. MOV is generally good, but MOV is a container, not a codec, so it depends on what is inside it.
Here is a post where I discussed the results.
Here is a link to the company that did it. http://www.mymovietransfer.com/
Here is a sample of the results. Watch in full screen if you can.

Any Thoughts on New iMac Fusion Drive for Editing Video

I was wondering if there were any thoughts about the new iMac for editing 720/1080 HD video from say an iPhone 5 or Canon Power Shot camera. The drive speed is now only 5400 RPM in the 21.5" model. I was curious if the the combo SSD/5400 RPM HDD had the same editing power as as a 7200 RPM drive.

Thanks, I've read it, well I should say I've tried to read it. Somewhat over my head, but not totally. I'm just curious if some of the video editing tasks would be done on the HDD or faster SSD drive. I'll have to go back to the article and see if there is any mention of that type of task.
I'm a little disappointed that you need to move up to the 27" iMac to get a 7200 RPM Fusion Drive. Do not need a 27" desktop.

Is the i5 iMac good for editing in AE and PP ?

Hey guys,
I am interested in buying a new iMac for editing my videos. Will the new iMac with a display of 21,5 inches and an i5 CPU at 2,9 GHz will be good for editing videos and short films on Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro ?
Thanks for the help and sorry for my English.

I'd say but be sure to get enough memory
also make sure the programs you will be using are in osx versions
because if you already have a license for a windows version and
it's not a cross platform license you will have to buy them again

Home Movie Cataloging - BEST PRACTICES

I have about 200 hours of old home movies on VHS which I am in the process of adding to my iMac. I am wondering about 'best practices' on how much video can be stored inside of iMovie '08, when how much video becomes too much inside of the program, etc.
In a perfect world, I'd like to simply import all of my home videos into iMovie, leave them in the 'library' section, and make 2-5 minute long clips in the 'projects' section for sharing with family members, but never deleting anything from the 'library'. Is this a good way to store original data? Would it be smarter to export all of the original video content to .DV files or something like that for space saving, etc?
Can I use iMovie to store and catalog all of my old home movies in the same way I use iPhoto to store ALL of my photos, and iTunes to store ALL of my music/hollywood-movies, etc?

We-ell, since no-one else has replied:
1 hour of DV (digital video in the file system which iMovie uses) needs 13GB of hard disc space.
You have 200 hours of video. 200 x 13 = 2,600 gigabytes. Two point six terabytes. If you put all that on one-and-a-bit 2TB hard discs, and a hard disc fails - oops! - where's your backup? ..Ah, on another one-and-a-bit 2TB hard discs ..or, preferably, spread over several hard discs, so that if one fails you haven't lost everything!
iMovie - the program - can handle video stored on external discs. But are you willing to pay the price for those discs? If so; fine! Digitise all your VHS and store it on computer discs (prices come down month by month).
Yes, you can "mix'n'match" clips between different projects, making all sorts of "mash-ups" or new videos from all the assorted video clips. But you'll need more hard disc space for the editing, too. You could use your iMac's internal hard disc for that ..or use one of the external discs for doing the editing on. That's how professionals edit: all the video "assets" on external discs, and edit onto another disc. That's what I do with my big floorstander PowerMac, or whatever those big cheesegraters were called..
So the idea's fine, as long as you have all the external storage you'd need, plus the backup in case one of those discs fails, and all the time and patience to digitise 200 hours of VHS.
Note that importing from VHS will import material as one long, continuous take - there'll be no automatic scene breaks between different shots - so you'll have to spend many hours chopping up the material into different clips after importing it.
Best way to index that? Dunno; there have been several programs which supposedly do the job for you (..I can't remember their names; I've tried a few: find them by Googling..) but they've been more trouble - and taken up more disc space - than I've been prepared to bother with. I'd jot down the different clips as you create them, either by jotting in TextEdit (simplest) or in a database or spreadsheet program such as Excel or Numbers or similar ..or even in a notebook.
Jot down the type of footage (e.g; 16th Birthday party), name of clip (e.g; 016 party), duration (e.g; 06:20 mins and seconds) and anything else you might need to identify each clip.
Best of luck!

Home movies on VHS to iMac for editing/ DVD

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