iMovie In an Analog World

iMovie in an Analog World

I have always loved to create things on my Macintosh. Over my 16 years with the Macintosh, I have used many applications to create even more projects. One area in which I have not yet noodled is video. And what better way to start then with a great program Apple released a couple of years ago, iMovie. It has done for video on the Mac what PageMaker did for newsletters and fliers way back when. Since the first release, it has been updated to iMovie 2.

I didn't have the money for some big, fancy digital setup, but I knew that there must be a way to do this on the cheap. I have an Apple PowerMac 8600, upgraded to a G3/366, 198MB of RAM, a couple of ATA/66 drives attached via an Acard controller, and finally an IXMicro TurboTV video capture card. It still runs Mac OS 9. While my Mac does have video in, I have found the capture card does a better job. I use an older Sony CCD-TR700 analog camera to shoot footage. While iMovie was made for digital video work, it is possible to take footage from an analog camera and import it into iMovie.

I found the IXMicro TurboTV card on eBay for $25.00. There are newer cards, but they cost over $200.00 and I wanted to keep this on the cheap. Once it arrived, I installed it in my last PCI slot. When I had it installed, I used a S-video cable to connect the camera to the TurbTV card.

Now that the hardware was ready, it was time to move on to software. Since iMovie will only control and capture video from a digital video camera (DVC), I needed to find some software to capture the video from an analog source. I tried Apple Video Player, but found it to be limited. There is VideoShop by Strata, but like Adobe Premiere, both are high-end and expensive. There are hardware solutions, such as FireWire to S-video/composite bridges, but even on eBay they are over $250.00. It was time to head over to versiontracker.com and start searching.

I stumbled upon BTV - wow - another great, cheap shareware find. It works very well capturing video from the IXMicro TurboTV and Sony TR700. You just really can't go wrong with this package. They also have a BTV Pro version with some extra bells and whistles, but I only needed it for the initial capture of video. (Info about BTV can b4 found at www.bensoftware.com.)

I now had a package to capture the video and QuickTime Pro, and iMovie 2 are already installed. The hardware was installed and the camera was connected. It was time to see if all these different parts can interact as advertised. Time to start working.

I grabbed a tape, popped it in the camera, launched BTV, hit the play button on the romte and watched the video come alive on screen. I captured a few clips and saved them to the hard disk. Once I was done with capturing the clips, I used QuickTime Pro to export them as Digital Video (DV) files. IMovie only works with DV files, and using the QT player is the fastest way I know of to convert them. You need to have the Pro version in order to export the clips and it is only a few dollars over at the Apple Store. Now, finally, I could launch iMovie.

My hand trembled as I double-clicked the iMovie icon. It launched and displayed the initial splash screen. Ahhhhh, time to create. I headed to the file menu and imported all of the dv clips I created. Within minutes there were five clips sitting on the shelf.

Because iMovie is an Apple product, it is well laid out and easy to follow. A manual might not be needed because it is so simple. However, iMovie - The Missing Manual by David Pogue really brought new insight into what can be accomplished with this little app, but that is another article.

An hour later, I had a rough draft of a movie, complete with transitions, effects, and sound. I am far from making Pulp Fiction, but I look forward to working more with both video and iMovie.

While I look forward to the day when I get my new G4 and digital video camera, I will continue to use the system I built. There are some extra steps involved in creating the final product, but it is still amazing to see how easy it is to create movies. Apple has once again come up with a winning solution.

Peter Hein has over 16 years experience working with the Macintosh platform; everything from
retail sales, corporate sales, consulting, then publishing. After 2 years in publishing, he moved to a university environment and now works in Computing and Telecommunication Services - Network Services. He provides third-level support for the Macintosh, while also administering the schools dial-up services and streaming media server. mailto:peter.hein@wright.edu

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