Hi all. I am a composer who writes for Tv and have been getting most of my work tapes on 3/4". I have two sony bvu decks (vo-5600 and bvu- 800) which have served me well but alas are beginning to show signs of age. What I want to do is move over to digital video and import that into Logic. I have had some files given to me as Quicktime but what I want to do now is actually dig. the video in myself. I figure I'll need a capture card etc. but I don't know about software or Logic compatability. Any info I can get from people using digital video in Logic would be much appreciated.

I don't know how most people do it and this may be lo-tek, but I simply have the client send a VHS with burned-in visual code with no track-2 SMPTE. I capture the picture into iMovie via an SVHS-to-Firerwire converter (routing the audio through my board, just in case it needs a tweak). I either load iMovie's captured DV file into Logic, or export it out of Logic in a more processor friendly size. So far, I have not detected any dropped frames or problems due to having no sync lock between the VHS deck and iMovie. It seems to work fine and I've not had any complaints.

> I don't know about software or > Logic compatability. Anything that creates a QT file, really. You can use Final Cut Pro, you can use Premiere, you can use iMovie. iMovie creates a DV stream which has a high data rate, but at the sme time does not tax the processor too much, since there's no coding/decoding going on, as all this is handed over to the external FW video device. Since you also will be wanting to supply work prints (and showreels), VHS is still in good shape, cause really anyone can read it. DVD is catching up though. Christian ====homepage http://uk.geocities.com/christianobermaier/home.htm ____________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping" your friends today! Download Messenger Now http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html

Recently I've been getting blank white Audio edit windows with no possibility to do any audio editing :-( Seems like some sort of memory problem to me. I've tried to reallocate the memory but no change. Anybody else having this problem or anybody knows how to avoid it? Cheers / Henrik

What formats would you expect to get the tapes you want to capture/digitize? If you can insist on only using mini-DV as your exchange medium, most any DV deck should do. Just plug it into your Firewire port and use iMovie or Final Cut Express to capture. (It's already digitized on the tape and FIrewire is just a transfer mechanism.) I've used two methods to get video to/from other formats. 1. The JVC SR-VS30U is a nice dual S/VHS-DV deck that supports SVHS, VHS, and mini-DV in one deck. Some of the button combinations are a little confusing, but you can go via Firewire to/from any of the 3 formats, and you can dub between SVHS/VHS and miniDV. 2. I've also used a two-deck solution and dubbed: VHS (or other format) --> Sony DVCAM deck, then rewind the tape and input to the Mac. This lets you use whatever format you want, plus DV and DVCAM. There are also converters that accept analog (composite or S-video) inputs and digitize to DV, and cards that go in your computer and accept a variety of inputs (some are analog, some digital).