Crazy, but it might just work?

[Trevor Allin]

Hi

Capturing uncompressed (low compression)

I was wondering about the Mac Mini. it's small and relatively inexpensive, and can work from battery.

What I want to know is this: Is it possible to fit an analogue or SDI capture card into a Mac mini, and then use an external hard drive?

I think the official answer is no. But can it be done? Perhaps, with abit of creative ambition it might be possible?!

Regards

Trevor

[Rob Lohman]

As far as I know there is no room whatsoever available inside the mini, so the
answer would be no in that case. Perhaps you can get an external USB device,
but I'm not sure if USB(2) has the bandwidth for what you want to do.

[Trevor Allin]

Hi Rob

Thanks for this. Is there any scope to take things out in order to make room, i.e the dvd drive etc?

Thanks

Trevor

[David Suthers]

For analogue capture, I think you will be limited to an external USB 2.0 capture device. There are several out there but I don't know which ones work with the Mac.

The easier option would be to use the firewire port on the mini and do direct digital capture. You can probably use the Mac's built-in software, or use dvgrab, which is available for Linux but should also run on a Mac.

You will need some sort on display so that you can see what the computer is doing, and a way to control the compter (keyboard and/or mouse). There are commercial displays available in small sizes (less than 7") but I don't know how much they cost. The monitor would need either a DVI video port, or you can use VGA with an adapter. As for a mouse or keyboard, you can use either corded or bluetooth devices. A small cell phone or PDA blutooth keyboard (think Blackberry) would be good.

You also mentioned an external hard drive. The computer comes standard with an 80GB drive and should have more than half of that space available for storage. With an hour of DV video taking about 13GB, you'll have 3 hours of capture time at the minimum. If you need more recording time, then you could always buy the computer with a bigger drive, or as you mentioned, go external.

As you can see, by the time you buy all the accessories needed to make a Mac mini work, the price is already close to (or above) the price of a decent laptop. This is the problem everyone faces when trying to build their own capture rig, and the main reason I used a tablet pc in my setup.

[Rob Lohman]

David: I think Trevor is looking for a SDI capture option, not DV (firewire).

[David Suthers]

oops, my bad.

I don't know much about SDI (obviously), so I can't help you there. With the exception of the required disk space and capture card options the rest of my post about the computer equipment should still apply.

[Trevor Allin]

Thanks everyone.

Is there any way then of constructing a box that a component card would fit into that could then connect to the mac mini via firewire?

I know such boxes exist if you want to recompress to mini dv, but that would defeat the object, I want the better video quality that comes from the component outputs of my JVC HD100 camera.

Knowing so little about how these things work is very frustrating sometimes!

Kind regards

Trevor

[Keith Wakeham]

I know that their is a device out there that does SDI (not HD-SDI, SD only) to firewire. Its not the Avid box, but that one does it to. Maybe Miranda?

I think it could be done but some pitfalls to it, like it might not actually fit in the mac mini without removing some stuff, but a similar small box might be possible assuming a really really really fast 2.5" drive. The only ones that i've seen to get the 30MB/s for uncompressed would be the 7k60/80/100 or the Seagate momentus 5400.2?

Interesting idea