Sorry, but the IOHD won't work with the iMac. Why? Sure, you have the firewire connection for it, but then what do you use for video storage? USB doesn't work for video...not a good sustained throughput. And the firewire bus...the ONLY firewire bus, is taken by the IOHD. So you can't use firewire. And you have zero expansion so no additional FW busses can be added, nor eSATA, MiniSAS, Fibrechannel. And you can't capture ProRes to your system drive.
Sooooo...
No external capture devices work on the iMac for capturing SDI or analog high end video. The iMac is a consumer computer, and it is fine for DV and HDV...but not Digibeta or ProRes.
As for not trusting the IOHD because it isn't HEAVY enough? Very odd statement. I just used it to upconvert a boatload of beta and digitbeta tapes to ProRes HD for a special on JFK that will air on NatGeo on the 22nd of this month. THE ENTIRE SHOW was SD upconverted to HD. I took my laptop and the IOHD and a Caldigit VR with me to Dallas to do the online remotely, as there were LOTS of tapes involved.
And FYI, the Matrox MXO2 is lighter than the IOHD, and is also a rather good capture device. Won't connect to an iMac though.
Forget the iMac...get a MacBook pro. Then you can have either the Matrox MXO2, MXO2 LE or IOHD to connect.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD...don't miss it.
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