Concerns with fully switching

[VIPER4]

Hi all,

I partially switched back in 2003 when I purchased a 12" pb Rev. A. I absolutely love the feel of the pb and do believe its design and OS is superior to any PC laptop of I have used.

However, most of my time since then has still been spent on my Dell desktop. My work has given me funds to spend on any computer equipment I wish, and I am thinking of getting a new 17" pb as my primary system. However, I am concerned with fully converting given the following problems thus far:

1) All of the video from VCR tapes I have captured on the Dell with Pinnacle Studio Deluxe is not recognized by Qtime or iMovie on the powerbook. I can only open these mpg files in the OSX (I have tiger on the 12 pb) dvd player, which doesn't do me much good for editing them.

2) iMovie does not recognize my Sony DCR-DVD 203 camcorder. I called Sony and they said their is no Apple support or driver software for this camcorder. Now, I do not have the latest iLife on the system, has anyone happened to use this camcorder successfully with their MACs?

3) I love keynote, however it is choppy in parts when delivering presentations. Will it run smooth as ice on a new 17" pb?

Thank you very much for your help!

JP

 

[Krazykrl]

JP,

1) You will likely have to reimport your video to the Mac to be able to properly edit it using iMovie. I have used several different video editing programs (Mac and PC) and just about none of them are compatible, it's not Apple's fault, it's up to the program manufacturer from what I can tell.

2) Try calling Apple support, see if the have any suggestions. Are you connecting via Firewire?

3) You can use Powerpoint (Office 2004), I have not used Keynote and cannot say if it will be 'choppy' on a newer system.

Hope this helps you.

 

[JonMaker]

1) All of the video from VCR tapes I have captured on the Dell with Pinnacle Studio Deluxe is not recognized by Qtime or iMovie on the powerbook. I can only open these mpg files in the OSX (I have tiger on the 12 pb) dvd player, which doesn't do me much good for editing them.

2) iMovie does not recognize my Sony DCR-DVD 203 camcorder. I called Sony and they said their is no Apple support or driver software for this camcorder. Now, I do not have the latest iLife on the system, has anyone happened to use this camcorder successfully with their MACs?

3) I love keynote, however it is choppy in parts when delivering presentations. Will it run smooth as ice on a new 17" pb?

Thank you very much for your help!

JP

1) Sounds like they are in MPEG2. QuickTime 7 Pro (with MPEG2 playback) *may* fix this.

2) I don't know.

3) I don't know how smooth you are referring to, but it will be smoother than on your 12" (consider the massive GPU difference).

 

[ftaok]

1) All of the video from VCR tapes I have captured on the Dell with Pinnacle Studio Deluxe is not recognized by Qtime or iMovie on the powerbook. I can only open these mpg files in the OSX (I have tiger on the 12 pb) dvd player, which doesn't do me much good for editing them.

What kind of video does the Pinnacle output. If it's mpg2, then you need to convert it to something iMovie can use. But expect video quality loss.

2) iMovie does not recognize my Sony DCR-DVD 203 camcorder. I called Sony and they said their is no Apple support or driver software for this camcorder. Now, I do not have the latest iLife on the system, has anyone happened to use this camcorder successfully with their MACs?

That camcorder will not work with Macs. The problem is that it is a DVD camcorder and not really suitable for producing footage to be edited. Sure the Windows software has some limited editing capabilities, but it's not the kind of things you can do with iMovie (or Final Cut). If you're dead set on keeping it, you could invest in software to convert the DVD footage to DV. iMovie will work with DV. As of right now, iMovie will not edit mpg2 footage directly, and I don't think it ever will. BTW, the conversion software is called DVDxDV. And expect to lose video quality in the multiple conversions.

 

[VIPER4]

Thank you - two follow-up questions

Thank you very much for your very helpful replies. Yes, the video files outputed by Pinnacle are MPEG-2 files.

Although it would involve much work, I would be willing to go back and recapture all of the VHS material if it would result in higher quality video output. I was just doing some research online and noticed capture hardware like Pinnacle's by Canopus called the ADVC 300. This is probably a long shot, but would anyone know:

1) If this hardware is superior in terms of converting the captured VHS material to higher quality video?

2) This hardware outputs video that works with iMovie?

Thanks again!!

JP