What I would like to know is if I can log and capture HDV footage with this machine.

Mac G4 - 350MHZ
612 MB of Ram
External Firewire Devices

I know I can log and capture SD footage(very reliably). But haven't tried HDV.

What do you think?

Tim

It sounds plausible. I mean, the data rates are the same, I don't see why not, as long as any preview modes were disabled.

POSSIBLY. YOu need at least FCP 5.0, and you need at least 1GB RAM.

Glad to hear that you are able to edit regular DV on that machine. According to Apple's site, you don't even meet the minium spec for that:

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/specs.html?finalcutpro

Macintosh computer with 867MHz or faster PowerPC G4, PowerPC G5, Intel Core Duo processor, or Intel Xeon processor, 512MB of RAM

And they suggest even more to work with HD:

HD features require 1GHz or faster single or dual processors, 1GB of RAM for HD features (2GB recommended)

So if you do experience problems then I suspect Apple will say your machine isn't supported. What version of FCP are you now running?

I know it's expensive to upgrade, but that G4 is really very slow by today's standards, and even the bottom of the line Mac Mini is many times faster. If somehow you can get it to work that's great, but I wouldn't put any more money into adding RAM or anything else for a machine of that age.

If you can't afford a new machine, consider a used G5. You will be amazed at how much faster and enjoyable the experience is :-)

I have plenty of horsepower.

1 Quad Core G5
1 Dual Core G5
1 Macbook Pro

What I would like to do is capture elsewhere, allowing me to edit and still capture. The G4 machine basically sits here and does nothing and I can't sell and realize anything other than a headache with trying to ship it. So I figured I would try to make it do a little work.

I thought maybe I would capture to the small mac, and transfer the files over network (overnight) to the edit stations and edit the next day.

Just a thought though, I was hoping it would be able to capture the footage. I have done this on several occassions with SD footage, just not HDV.

Thanks for the help so far.

Tim

Well in that case, since you have the software anyway, why not give it a try and see what happens?...