my church has 4 cams feeding into a video editor/mixer then goes into a dvd recorder - what they want to do is possibly split that signal after the mixer and send it to mac for further editing. right now what we do is take the finished DVD and using the canopus transfering it into the mac [real time] which is taking alot of time.
So we would like to get that feed into mac directly which would save alot of time later so we can just edit what needs to be done. my question is what type of hardware/software would be needed to accomplish this.

Assuming you have Final Cut:

Off the mixer, take some sort of video output off it. i.e. analog out, Svideo or composite.
Feed that into your camera (Or a VTR).
Set the camera to A/V--> DV OUT ON. Not all cameras can do this. The feature is called analog-digital passthrough by some manufactueres.

In FCP, use the capture now feature.
In the preferences, make sure that capture now is NOT limited to ___ minutes.
Make sure there is enough drive space.
Turn device control off if necessary (probably).

Ask around in your church, more than likely someone will have an old(er) decommissioned Hi8 Sony camcorder - most of those will do the pass-through.

Use the highest quality possible off the mixer: component if available, S-VHS... composite is what you really don't want to use if you're after quality. And don't forget to also feed the audio into the camcorder.