In cosideration of going Mac, I'll have to give up my video toaster, which provides live webcasting, etc.

I can set up a dedicated capturing device, but it will only work in SD. Now that may be ok for internal playback on PC's. But should I need to capture in HD/HDV for the sake of having an HD rez video on file, I may have to go with a different setup altogether.

In regards to webcasting on the mac end of things, does such a device exist? I can get an HDV cam to capture HD sized stuff to tape, but I could also get another mac with a dedicated card for webcasting. Maybe even a second mac laptop that I can also use for field editing/capture.

Any advice here?

Pete

Let me add this.

Is it possible to at least capture DVCPRO HD on mac labtop, and if so, what would I need?

I'm finding software for the mac that will allow video webcasting, but not sure what works.

Pete,
If you are going to capture native DVCPRO HD, it's definitely possible on a mac laptop. You do that over firewire so you would just need your camera or a deck. There's a good article on Ken Stone's website about this: http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/dvcpro_hd_workflow_balis.html. If you want uncompressed then I have no idea, but I bet it's not possible.

Edit: Sorry, I am assuming you are using FCP on Mac. That article is only about FCP.

I'm considering switching to a mac workstation, and may also opt for a notebook for field editing/capture. So you reply is helpful.

Pete

webcasting on mac:
The quicktime broadcaster program is free I think.

Channel Storm is an excellent webcasting program on Mac... allows live switching and stuff like that.

The PC side is also good because of Windows Media Encoder, which many people will be able to view. For streaming across the internet to many people, things get expensive though on either quicktime or windows media because of bandwidth issues.

Wirecast
By Vara Software.