Zeno's Paradox
November 07, 2003 - Exploiting the Analog Hole

A coworker asked me if I could make him a copy of this week's Smallville. Since I had it on my Tivo, I told him that I would. Rather than put it on VHS, I decided to try and put it on a proper DVD. Read more about how I did this.

(Random thought... Did I just violate the DMCA? This technique could work for any analog source -- including game consoles and DVD players. *shrug*)

First off, you need the following:

A video output source that uses red, yellow, and white cables. (I used my Tivo.)
A Dazzle Firewire DV Bridge. (I purchased mine as refurbished for cheap at the Apple Store.)
A Mac with a SuperDrive and iMovie and iDVD.
A DV-capable digital camcorder. (Optional, see below.)
One DVD-R disc.

I used two steps. The first step had the Tivo hooked up to the DV bridge, which was hooked up to the camcorder.

In the first step, I had analog going in, and DV coming out. The camcorder was used to store the DV video so I could import it to iMovie. Note that this is optional if you have a long enough Firewire cable. A long enough cable will allow you to plug the bridge directly into the Mac. When all is hooked up, play the video as if you were watching it, and let the bridge encode it and send it to the camcorder. (The camcorder should be in VCR mode.)

After you have transferred the movie to the camcorder, hook the camcorder up to the Mac. Open iMovie and import the video. After the video is imported, use iMovie to scrub out the commercials. Then open up iDVD and select the iMovies to include. (I managed to fit two Smallville episodes on a single DVD-R.) Build your menu, add music if you like, then burn the disk.

If you want, print out some labels for the disks. (I use some Fellowes labels. These can be picked up for cheap.) Slap on the labels and you're finished.

Ain't Macs nice? I think I'm going to get a longer Firewire cable and start archiving Enterprise and sending some copies home since WB and UPN are not available in the 88419 zipcode via DirectTV. (What's up with that?)

Don't forget to make DMG files of the DVD with DiskUtility so you can burn more copies later!

Posted by br284 at 10:33 AM

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As a note, there's a straight to Mpeg2 version of the "bridge". This has a hardware encoder built in, so you don't have to do the software conversion on your Mac, which can take a while. It's sometimes a cheaper, more simpler option for people. You would just pause the "recording" until you got past the commercials, then start recording again to do "editing". The DV format is more for actual editing of the stream in general.
Also, any notes on how long of a DVD you've gotten iDVD to create? I hit a limit at about 1.5 hours.
Jason McIntosh

Posted by Jason McIntosh on January 13, 2004 08:21 AM
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