Ever since I bought this G4 I've been waiting to test out its legendary "ease of use' when it comes to compiling and publishing photos and movies for distribution.
I bought a Sony HC-20 in the summer in time for our daughter's birth. Loyal readers may recall my ancient and crusty DV cam, the Canon ZR-1 - a bad design, poporly implemented (my favorite!). The HC-20 has been knocked for its poor still image quality and lack of analog inputs, but neither of those were important to me. What I wanted was a small, affordable DV cam with decent (but costs $800).performance, and at $349 and its tiny size the HC-20 fit the bill. If I were to step up from the HC-20 I would have gone for the Samsung SC-D6040, which has a 4 megapixel still camera function as well (but costs $800).
I was getting used to the HC-20 and on our last roadtrip I gave it a workout. Usually I had the DV cam and my wife had the still camera (an old Kodak DC4800, but hey it works great). Loyal readers will also recall I use a Sony DSC-U40 that i keep in my pocket as well.
So after 1200 miles and a few days of unpacking I had a bunch of media memories - 250 or so photos and about an hour of tape.
The first step was to fire up iDVD and create a slide show - very easy. Pick some photos, pick a song from my song library (Jackson' Browne's Running On Empty seemed appropriate). I actually created two shows as there is a 99 image limit per slideshow (why??). The other song was Robert Randolph's Going In The Right Direction.
There are a bunch of menu templates in iDVD and I picked one of the road trip ones. You can even drag and drop a photo to appear in the rear view mirror on the menu and it has animation that makes it look like you're driving down the road. Nice.
I burned it, which took a few minutes, and voila! I had a very pro looking DVD for the relatives with some cool slideshows.
OK, now it was time for the video. I fired up iMovie. The Sony comes with a USB 2.0 cable so I plugged that in and then clicked on iMovie to capture video. "Camera not recognized." Uh oh. I didn't have the right firewire cable so I couldn't try that. Sony gives you a 4 pin to 4 pin firewire/ilink cable - useless on a Mac (although works for PCs, which have a different firewire connector). 6 pin connectors also have a power line, whereas 4 pin connectors just have data.
Why do people make things so difficult!
So I tried to capture the video on my Dell using the USB 2.0 cable. Oh lord, PC flashback time. I saw the streaming image but couldn't capture it, then I captured it but it was low-res, then I captured it and there was no sound, then I . . . screw it.
I went with my 5 year old son to Best Buy and picked up a 4 pin to 6 pin firewire cable.
Back home I plugged it into the HC-20, and the the Mac, clicked and - it worked! All the video came in at hi-res (with sound) and clips were made on a selection palette every time I had hit the pause button when shooting.
I decided to make a few movies - some rides at Disneyland and one of each Grandparent visit.
You can drag and drop these clips or delete them. You can pretty easily crop them and delete boring parts. You can drag and drop transitions between scenes, add titles, etc. Easy.
When you back into iDVD, you just drag and drop the movie file onto your DVD menu screen and it appears as a new menu item. Rename it, position it the way you want and save the whole project.
I burned a copy, which took about an hour with all of that video, and tried it out. Darn it - the menu text went beyond the TV screen. There's an option to set a "TV safe" area in iDVD, so by doing that you can insure it all fits on the screen. Many TVs overscan one way or the other.
On the wishlist of iDVD would be a way to print labels and DVD case covers, and odd omission. Otherwise, it "does what it says on the tin."
How refreshing.
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