ADVC: A Mac OS X app to monitor in full screen the output of an ADVC-55?

[mbray]

I've googled the heck out of this and can't believe there isn't an easily discovered solution :(

I want to be able to hook up an old time vcr, game system or similar to the ADVC-55 and then on my Mac (OS X 10.4 PPC) just look at and listen to the video and audio presented in a full screen, not while recording. YES, I want to use my Mac as a TV monitor basically, that's the workflow.

There's already a thread on this forum about this issue but for the ADVC-110. The intrepid user of the 110 found a freeware application, hTV, that seemed to work for him, but sadly not for me. I get no picture or sound at all using hTV. Nor can I use Quicktime's capture with the ADVC-55 for whatever reason - no sound or picture. But Quicktime doesn't have a full screen preview, either.

iMovie's preview window can be resized large, but that still leaves the timeline, menu bar, and other junk on the screen. Final Cut Pro's preview can't be resized at all, and is smallish.

I'm quite surprised that something seemingly so simple does not appear to be available for this usage.

Does anyone know if there is a solution, or should I move this post to the feature request section?

[GrassValley_CP]

The ADVC-55 is an analog to digital converter only, whereas the ADVC-110 can convert from analog to digital and digital to analog. This may be the reason why the ADVC-55 doesn't work as the ADVC-110 does in the workflow you've described.

Keep in mind that the ADVC devices are designed to transmit a generic, firewire-based DV stream for capture/recording into practically any video editing software for...well, capture and video editing.

Though you can jerry-rig some ADVC models to work as TV tuners, as it seems you're looking to do, this isn't their intended purpose--it's all a matter of using the right tool for the job. So don't set your expectations too high and expect the ADVC-55 to do something that it wasn't designed to do.

I believe Elgato offers solutions for the Mac platform that will solve your problem.

[GrassValley_KH]

I'm not sure why hTV wouldn't work the same way as the ADVC110. They both employ the same conversion of analog to digital. (but as Chris says, it's one-way traffic only, with the ADVC55)


Unfortunately I just moved to a new MacBook so I cannot test FireWire anymore...dash it all..

[mbray]

COOL - I found a solution!

Vidi, by Mitz Pettel, is a freeware application for Mac OS X (10.2.8 or newer) that will allow you to view firewire DV input in beautifully anti-aliased full screen. Works great with my ADVC-55 (notwithstanding the expected, totally tolerable 7/4 frames converter delay which affects both audio and video- this is not noticeable enough to even interfere with gameplay of videogame consoles).

You can also record the DV stream from within Vidi, but I found that the audio tracks from the resulting DV files had to be rendered when I pulled them into Final Cut Pro 4.5 HD, so beware of that (i.e. you might want to do your capturing exclusively within the application you intend to use for editing).