Ancient tech, part deux: cheapest way to get video in on an iMac G4?

[PeterB]

I'm getting an old iMac G4 ready for a setup that likely won't see a whole lot of use, but it'd be nice to have up and working. What's the cheapest way to get a decent quality of video in on this machine? TiA

[Forrest]

What year or speed is the iMac? I believe the early models running less than 1 GHz were all USB 1, while the GHz models were USB 2.

[The Grim Ninja]

I think the purpose would help a lot in knowing what to suggest. To record? To monitor? Security? What sort of duration for the video?

[cbelt3]

El Gato ?

[jdc]

what kind of video? from an iPhone? or a video cam? or?

[davemchine]

I would think an El Gato (or similar) product with hardware compression would be the only real option. A G4 just doesn't have the oomph to do much.

[PeterB]

Sorry guys. Additional info:

1) Yes, it's the USB 2.0 version of the iMac.

2) Video input isn't likely to be HD or anything... basically it's video-in from a microscope setup. More or less just to be able to see what's under the scope.

3) I too was thinking an ElGato product, but then I'd be stuck with whatever version of EyeTV runs under 10.4.x. The iMac does have Firewire, so that might suggest another option.

[The Grim Ninja]

You may want to look into a Firewire based video digitizer. One of the ones that were used to bring in DV [Digital Video] for editing in iMovie/FCP/ect. This would be a lot of data for recording, but it should be fine if you just wish to monitor things. I'm a bit fuzzy on Quicktime's capabilities from that OS, so I don't know if it'll be an adequate monitor. Apple sure has neutered QT over the years.

[kj4btkljv]

The Canopus (now Grass Valley) ADVC100 or ADVC110 is a bidirectional A/D converter.

http://www.amazon.com/Canopus-ADVC-100-A...B00007L68E
http://www.grassvalley.com/products/advc110

Jeff

[Chakravartin]

PeterB wrote:
2) Video input isn't likely to be HD or anything... basically it's video-in from a microscope setup. More or less just to be able to see what's under the scope.

What's it got for video-out?