Dazzle DV Bridge and iMovie
Wow. Been a while since I posted in here. I thought my registration got all screwed up because i couldn't login using Safari. Back to Mozilla and tadaa.
ANYway, hope you guys had a great holiday season. Here's my question for you: I have a couple Mac consulting jobs I'm doing where I'm helping customers set up high-end Mac systems, and then doing some additional training once they're comfortable with the Finder, etc. Both are switchers.
Today I got both systems installed and running well. Next comes the hard part. I have one client who wants to convert a bunch of analog video footage onto his Mac. According to Apple's web site and the box, the Dazzle DV Bridge is just the ticket to do that as you can hook up VCRs or analog cameras.
No Mac software comes with it, but the manual stipulates that all you need is a built-in Firewire port and "DV software". It specifically mentions iMovie by name so I want to know if it can be used effectively. I'd rather not have this guy go buy Premiere or FCE just yet as he's new to video editing. I want to start simple and just get these things into his computer and onto DVD.
My understanding is with most DV cameras that have come out in the last year or so, all you do is plug it into the Firewire port and iMovie opens and starts importing clips. How does this compare with using something like the DV Bridge - does iMovie "see" it as simply another camera? Can you just hook everything up, open iMovie and hit "play" on the source device and away it will go?
Any advice or "do's and don'ts" I can pass along would be great. I think I can handle the DV camera stuff - but this Dazzle thing has me a little puzzled. Not so much connecting it but getting the clips imported....
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.
-Moogs
[ 02-02-2003: Message edited by: Moogs ]</p>
ANYway, hope you guys had a great holiday season. Here's my question for you: I have a couple Mac consulting jobs I'm doing where I'm helping customers set up high-end Mac systems, and then doing some additional training once they're comfortable with the Finder, etc. Both are switchers.
Today I got both systems installed and running well. Next comes the hard part. I have one client who wants to convert a bunch of analog video footage onto his Mac. According to Apple's web site and the box, the Dazzle DV Bridge is just the ticket to do that as you can hook up VCRs or analog cameras.
No Mac software comes with it, but the manual stipulates that all you need is a built-in Firewire port and "DV software". It specifically mentions iMovie by name so I want to know if it can be used effectively. I'd rather not have this guy go buy Premiere or FCE just yet as he's new to video editing. I want to start simple and just get these things into his computer and onto DVD.
My understanding is with most DV cameras that have come out in the last year or so, all you do is plug it into the Firewire port and iMovie opens and starts importing clips. How does this compare with using something like the DV Bridge - does iMovie "see" it as simply another camera? Can you just hook everything up, open iMovie and hit "play" on the source device and away it will go?
Any advice or "do's and don'ts" I can pass along would be great. I think I can handle the DV camera stuff - but this Dazzle thing has me a little puzzled. Not so much connecting it but getting the clips imported....
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.
-Moogs
[ 02-02-2003: Message edited by: Moogs ]</p>
Comments
i.e. setup:
Mac - firewire cable - MiniDV cam - composite cable - Analog Audio/Video Source
Not as straight forward as using minidv footage, but it works great.
A few little tips:
- Unlike a camera to computer setup, the i-movie does not control the play of the camera. What you do is control the play of the camera directly on teh camera. So play, FF, Rwind all on the camera controls. You will see it played on i-movie and then you push import on i-movie as usual.
- Make sure you hook the camera in DV in ports on bridge. Then firwire from bridge goes in computer.
- Occassionaly on video, I get a small buzz sound while importing and playing back. If this happens, just import again and usually works fine.
Good luck. :eek:
Just a bit slower and crashes (closes unexpectedly) very often.
What sound problemsyou having.
Regarding the importation of clips, what would the exact sequence be using iMovie 3? Lets say I have the Red, White and Yellow components hooked up, the FW is "bridged" to the Mac and iMovie is open.
Do I just queue the tape to the beginning of the clip, then click "Import" in iMovie, then "play" on the camera? Then just click "stop" on the camera whenever I want the "feed" to stop?
Do I just queue the tape to the beginning of the clip, then click "Import" in iMovie, then "play" on the camera? Then just click "stop" on the camera whenever I want the "feed" to stop?[/QB][/QUOTE]
Push play on camera , then you will see it on i-movie, then you can push import at part you want. You can use FF/RW on camera to move back and forth.
<img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
It's not the automated process that a true digital camera to computer setup would have. That's because the analog camera you connect to the Dazzle can't be controlled by the computer commands.
Anyway...
When you plug in the Dazzle, iMovie "sees" it as a camera, even if your video camera isn't plugged in.
When the camera is plugged in, all you have to do is hit the "play" button on the import screen. Once iMovie is in "play/import" mode any signal coming in from the camera via the dazzle will be playing on the computer screen (it's the same image that's simultaneously in the camera's viewfinder.)
Last, there's an "import" button right about the "play" button. As the movie is playing, just hit the import button and a clip will be captured. Hit the import button again to stop the capture. Meanwhile the video camera is playing constantly, and is still playing even after you stop importing.
The user has to manually hit play and stop on both the computer and on the physical camera. It's very easy to do, even for a beginner, once they've done it two or maybe three times. I imagine you could do it in seconds.
i wonder how bad an analog scene will look among the digital stuff. only one way to find out!
I've found that dazzle is also really handy if you have a vcr with cable hookup, and no tv, as is my case in my dorm room...
i just hook it up through my dazzle, and i can watch tv through imovie.
So basically the import "queue points" are determined simply by when I click "import" on iMovie while the feed is coming in through the Bridge. That's cool. I thought it might be a little more "manual" than that. Actually better to control the import start and stop points from iMovie than the camera....
I must say this is all very encouraging. yOOT!
2002 was the year of the wOOT, now it's time for the yOOT to take its rightful place among legendary web forum words. You heard it here first.
<strong>Thanks foye (stop laughing at me damnit) and bunge.
So basically the import "queue points" are determined simply by when I click "import" on iMovie while the feed is coming in through the Bridge. That's cool. I thought it might be a little more "manual" than that. Actually better to control the import start and stop points from iMovie than the camera....
I must say this is all very encouraging. yOOT!
2002 was the year of the wOOT, now it's time for the yOOT to take its rightful place among legendary web forum words. You heard it here first.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Is this laugh. I thought it was just energetic. No offense meant.
<img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
Two tips.
One, by default "Automatic Scene Detection" (or something like that) is on in the preferences. When it's on iMovie is set to automatically import into multiple clips at scene changes. This doesn't work properly with the Dazzle since there are no digital commands going back and forth.
Two, I'm finding it very helpful to use the "action" and "cut" commands when filming. It's a perfect way to know when to toggle the import button in iMovie. If I had done it consistently while shooting I could just let the damn thing play straight through pulling in clips without having to rewind the camera when I miss the beginning of a scene....
The guy has one of those tiny little Sony DV cameras with a Firewire port and the touch-screen menu interface. New camera so I figured it would be easier to show him how the automated features in iMovie work on that.
Well, for whatever reason I could not control the camera using iMovie's controls. I had to manually press play on the camera first, then press play and import as decsribed above. The auto-sensing clip feature worked OK, but I should've been able to start and stop the camera playback from iMovie and I couldn't. It would say "Camera Playing" but nothing would happen - blue screen on the Mac, blue screen on the camera.
It was in VCR (what the hell is VTR mode anyway? a typo in Apple's documentation?) mode and we tried using the AV out > DV thingy both ways and it didn't make a differnce. Are there only certain DV cameras iMovie can control without having to press "play" on the camera itself?
Also, the really really low end cameras do not support analog/dv bridging. People buy cheap cameras thinking they are getting a bargain and all they get is incompatibility. Of course, this may not be the case.
-Chris
[ 02-07-2003: Message edited by: jim katta ]</p>