Gotta say first I'm loving this message board. Nothing like benefitting from the knowledge of those who've gone before. Okay, I am planning on assembling an edit suite centering around a new G3/350. This will be mainly for work in DV format. I currently own an old p/mac 6100/60AV. Word processing is about all that's keeping it out of the trash heap. I first thought that when I got the new system, I would just give it to my mother as a email tool. Then this thought popped in my head: The 6100/60AV has an s-video port. Could I hook the old mac up to the new G3 via ethernet and import video clips directly through the svideo port to the G3 for use in (perhaps) Premiere, using the 6100 as a video capture board? For the DV stuff I would use the new technology of course, but this way I could include traditional forms of video if I desired. Never really used the port on the 6100. It has a measly 240M hard drive, only like 16m ram. Would that effect what I'm thinking of? Would the speed of the ethernet effect it? Would it work through a simple AppleTalk connection? Has anyone else tried this? Or should I just dump it off on mom?

-- Robert E. Dorn (redeyefilm@yahoo.com), June 19, 1999

Answers

dont think it would work. used to have the same 6100/60av. im pretty sure that the bus speed along with the slower processor and mother board componets would make capturing any kinda of video really difficult. i think apple had the right idea but the system seemed way too slow to even thing about doing video with it. you would definately need a fast drive to capture to and theres no room for that.

as far as sending video over ethernet. i dont know if its even possible. ive never seen any editing systems that used a capture card from a networked computer. they normally have to have the card in the physical system

-- Christian Matts (Simple312@yahoo.com), July 11, 1999.

Follow-up question: can video files be transferred via ethernet? Let's say I capture video on the 6100 (image quality and processor speed notwithstanding). Can I then transfer the files to the G3 in a usable form?

-- Robert E. Dorn (redeyefilm@yahoo.com), August 17, 1999.

You can on a PC. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't. Once the video is captured, it's a file. you can transfer files other files over an ethernet. I did try to capture DV over a Fast ethernet and it didn't work, The packet thing isn't timed good enough for real time capture.

-- Thomas Koch (coast3@execpc.com), September 01, 1999.