With Live Capture Plus you can easily capture an entire DV tape to disk, either at full DV resolution or using various compressed, lower resolution, preview formats. And if you use CatDV or CatDV Pro you can directly create CatDV previews and enter log notes to build up a CatDV catalog as a permanent and searchable record of your tapes’ contents in a single pass.
Features of Live Capture Plus include:
- Full DV device control
- Automatic retry if dropped frames or tape errors are detected, ensuring frame perfect captures every time (even when capturing to a slow external drive or network volume)
- Automatic capture of an entire tape or a programmed section between specified In and Out points
- Automatically split the capture into a separate file for each scene
- Capture as a raw DV stream, MPEG4, or using any QuickTime codec
- Compress clips in background while capture is in progress, automatically pausing tape if necessary
- Build up a thumbnail catalog and type in logging comments while a tape is playing
- Operate standalone or integrated with the CatDV and CatDV Pro media asset databases
- Automatic handling of timecode resets
- Automatic date-based grouping of clips belonging to the same subject
- Advanced capture architecture guarantees perfect lip synch
- Powerful yet intuitive user interface
- Capture your tapes as previews that can be downloaded to an iPhone or iPod
User Interface
The graphical user interface of Live Capture Plus has five main areas:
- The Camera panel, including tape transport controls, timecode display, and a preview of the picture being played. This panel also displays a thumbnail of the current clip when logging.
- The Capture panel, which is used to enter the tape name and specify which portion of the tape is to be captured.
- The Settings dialog, in which you specify the format and destination for captures, along with other preferences.
- The Logging panel, in which you can enter a brief description of the current clip (or previous clips) while the tape is playing.
- The Catalog panel, which shows all the clips you have logged so far and that will be saved as a CatDV catalog.
New features in version 2.2
Live Capture Plus 2.2 adds a number of new features:
- Better control of movie size, with a new option for half height captures to minimise interlacing effects
- New option to control duration of live stream captures
- New option to monitor audio during captures (Mac only)
- Improvements to the handling of capture errors such as timecode resets
- Other fixes and enhancements
These are in additional to the significant functional improvements in 2.1:
- Support for automatically appending to an existing catalog (if you use CatDV 7 or later)
- Support for capturing in a format that’s compatible with iMovie08
- Catalogs are automatically saved to your home directory while you log
- Other bug fixes and minor enhancements
- Now available for Microsoft Windows
The following features were introduced in version 2.0:
- Universal Binary for PPC or Intel Macs
- Uses latest QuickTime APIs for compatibility with Java 1.4 and beyond
- New ‘Catalog’ panel displays all the currently logged clips, making it easier to navigate back and add further log notes while capture progresses and new clips are still being added.
- Ability to create multiple thumbnails for a clip for better display in a timeline or filmstrip view in CatDV.
- Ability to capture standalone movies and create a CatDV catalog that correctly refers to the media files.
- Ability to monitor video while it’s being captured, making it easier to enter log notes while a capture is in progress.
- New keyboard shortcuts (accessible via the Logging menu) to make it easier to mark clips and events while a capture is in progress.
- New setting to specify a different temporary directory where intermediate DV streams are saved prior to conversion.
- Option to keep the DV stream files rather than delete them after conversion. (Clips in the CatDV catalog will refer to these .dv files.)
- New naming options for standalone converted files, based on tape and timecode, date and time of recording, or a sequential incrementing clip number.
- New option to start a new clip when there’s a change in date and time of recording, to support scene detection when capturing HDV footage downconverted to DV.
- Ability to manually start a new clip at any point while capture is in progress.
- Maintains a long queue of clips remaining to be compressed in the background.
- New option to capture a live stream without using device control or taking account of timecode, to support capturing via a DV converter. (Clips will have a “time of day” timecode.)
- New field to allow entry of catalog comments.
- Additional file size limit presets.
- Audible alert at end of capture.