| Click here to select a new forum. |
| ATI XClaim VR AGP recording on Mac? (not All-In-Wonder) |
Posted by: Bunsen on 2016-02-17 01:03:40
Just wondering if anyone has ever got the recording side of these /edit/ All-In-Wonder / cards to work in a Mac.
|
Posted by: Unknown_K on 2016-02-17 15:57:01
I have a few of them (one boxed) and I don't think they ever came with drivers/software for Mac use. These cards needed directx to function.
|
Posted by: NJRoadfan on 2016-02-18 08:21:01
They likely won't work due to architectural differences. ATI did develop Macintosh cards with the same Rage Theater capture chip though, the XClaim VR series. The PCI/AGP All-in-Wonders have excellent capture quality, but ATI's odd way of interfacing with the chip on these cards made creating WDDM drivers for anything past Windows XP difficult. I doubt its an issue with OS X though, just someone needs to write the driver.
|
Posted by: Gorgonops on 2016-02-18 08:37:15
Even the Windows drivers for these cards suck. And given how Linux and BSD have only very spotty support for them as well writing a MacOS driver is probably a pretty long pole.
(Also depending on the generation of the card the hardware itself was prone to conflicts; a friend of mine ended up returning a Radeon-era one because the oddball AGP-PCI bridge chip used to interface some of the features conflicted with something on his particular motherboard. Research suggested it was a not uncommon problem.)
In any case, to use one of these in a Mac at all wouldn't you need to flash it with an Open Firmware compatible video BIOS? I dunno, maybe you could use the firmware from a non-AIW card, but if there's any initialization code necessary for the capture bits that ATI stuck onboard that might be another hurdle for writing your driver.
(The one exception of course might be for an All-In-Wonder that's hardware identical to a Mac VR Xclaim. A BIOS swap might be all you need in that one case.)
|
Posted by: Bunsen on 2016-02-18 18:52:06
the XClaim VR series Ah yeah, they're the ones I was thinking of - I got my names jumbled up. They work okay then?
|
Posted by: NJRoadfan on 2016-02-19 04:06:17
The XClaim VR only came with MacOS 8-9 drivers for capture, otherwise they work fine (I have a XClaimVR 128). OS X is video output only.
|
Posted by: Unknown_K on 2016-02-19 22:27:39
There are a bunch of nice and cheap cards for the mac for video capture (unless you mean TV capture) to worry about getting an AIW to work.
|
Posted by: NJRoadfan on 2016-02-20 12:51:13
TV capture is pretty irrelevant these days after the DTV switch over, just use the S-Video output from the cable/OTR box or get a modern USB tuner. My XClaim VR 128 came with an external TV tuner so options for that existed back in the day as well.
|
Posted by: Bunsen on 2016-02-20 14:14:35
Thanks everyone.
The reason for specifying AGP was that I want to use this with a Cube. I know there are plenty of PCI cards around, but there's only the one slot in a Cube so the single AGP card would have to do double duty as output and input.
|
Posted by: Gorgonops on 2016-02-20 14:33:05
For NTSC/PAL capture in that situation I'd probably say a Firewire bridge is a better bet. There were also a few USB 1.1 devices that got around the bandwidth limits by using an onboard hardware MPEG encoder but I recall those having... issues.
|
Posted by: Bunsen on 2016-02-21 17:18:50
Hmm, remember any names of those Firewire devices offhand, Gorgonops?
I assume the chance of finding anything capable of HD recording with OS 9 drivers is precisely nil.
|
Posted by: Cory5412 on 2016-02-21 19:36:45
For NTSC: I've used one of the Sony devices listed in this MacWorld article from the era, primarily with Mac OS X (10.5, Final Cut Express, also iMovie), but "DV" is pretty standardized so there's no reason they won't work with iMovie or Final Cut 2/3 on OS 9 on a G4 Cube.
The Formac Studio DV/TV may be the "best" option, certainly the aspect of FM tuning on a modern Mac is pretty interesting. As mentioned, the TV tuner may be no good, unless they later updated it to be an ATSC and/or DVB-T tuner that puts HDV in, although you'd probably need OS X and a newer copy of iMovie or Final Cut (like, from 2004 or later) to capture HDV.
There also appears to be a Formac Studio DV that only has the analog/DV conversion functions.
Another nice thing about many of these bridges is you can connect an analog TV and video deck to the output side (at least on the Sony) and "print" your video to tape, or use that as a preview monitor when you're editing, depending on what software you have.
|
Posted by: Bunsen on 2016-02-21 19:42:10
Cool, thanks Cory
|
Posted by: rsolberg on 2016-02-21 22:33:11
Canopus also made a range of FireWire capture devices that have been well regarded. When in a bind without such a device, I use a Canon ZR series camcorder. When in playback mode in its settings menu, there's an AV-DV out function that allows one to connect composite analogue AV device to the camera's AV connector and it streams DV to the application of your choice. I've been doing so since the G3 slot loading iMac came out, so there's a very good precedent for compatibility.
|
| 1 |