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USB/FW capture card for PowerPC Macs?
Posted by: CircuitBored on 2025-04-02 06:31:56
Hi all,

Pretty straightforward question this one.

Does anyone know of a composite/s-video capture card compatible with PowerPC Macs running OS X? I'm looking for something to plug into my PowerBook G4 and use on the go.

Thanks in advance for any info provided 🙂
Posted by: CircuitBored on 2025-04-02 06:32:45
I could of course use a DV camera as an analogue-digital converter but it's a bit of a cumbersome solution.
Posted by: Coloruser on 2025-04-02 06:47:59
Pinnacle Video Capture for Mac. It has composite inputs and a USB 1.1 or 2.0 compatible interface. https://lowendmac.com/zisman/09az/pinnacle-video-mac.html
Posted by: Fizzbinn on 2025-04-02 06:58:12
A Greenville/Canopus ADVC-55 would be nice for this, fairly compact, composite/s-video capture to Firewire DV out. No drivers required on your Mac. Unfortunately it looks like they aren't cheap when they come up on eBay...
Posted by: s_pupp on 2025-04-02 16:43:04
I don’t know what other devices maintain audio-video sync, but the Canopus ADVC-100 does. It uses a wall-wart power supply, though, so not as easily mobile a solution as perhaps you are looking for.

When using my Sony DV camcorder as a passthrough device, audio-video sync issues become visible after about 22 minutes.
Posted by: obsolete on 2025-04-02 17:59:25
I have a Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge that I believe will do this. The question is whether I can find the power brick...and what it would cost to ship to the UK. There seem to be some others for sale out there that are reasonably affordable, though.
Posted by: quicksilver on 2025-04-02 18:51:05
Elgato Video Capture small USB device captures standard definition composite and s-video with left and right RCA audio jacks. Supposedly works with iPhone, iPad, Mac, and PC. Captures using H.264 encoder. I’ve never used one but I like Elgato’s products.
Posted by: chelseayr on 2025-04-03 03:55:53
its not the portable kind (bit on bulky size especially) but even then there is the datavideo dac-5 and some other datavideo products that should work with osx (as they appear to simply show up as generic dv feed to the os afaik) if anyone is curious?

even then be mindful that some of the products in that kind of category do not always have analog inputs (eg only dv and sdi alone) naturally
Posted by: mikes-macs on 2025-06-16 08:57:22
I liked firewire capture devices as opposed to USB ones of the time of their release back then. Firewire devices on a Mac back then captured in DV or MP4 format in which the former can take up several gigabytes of space for small amount of content and the latter have synch issues with audio on slower drives. Newer Firewire and USB capture devices can capture in MPEG2 Transport Stream.
Posted by: just.in.time on 2025-06-24 20:20:55
Sony used to make a composite/s-video to FireWire capture device. If I recall correctly I used to use it with iMovie. It worked really well.
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