I believe my first big video project was originally completed back in high school, I'm not sure of the exact grade. About four friends and I borrowed a camera from a member of my church, and we took it to the Richland Mall. Now it should be noted that back then video cameras came in two sections; the camera that you braced on your shoulder, and the recorder which you wore against your waste.

At the mall, we interviewed cute blondes with bad breath at Record Town, we filmed a game of rod hockey (I and the mighty CCCP remained undefeated), and a couple of guys drew quite a crowd while rapping for us. It was only ten minutes before the mall closed and we'd resorted to interviewing mannequins that the security guard who had been trailing us for half an hour bothered to point out we couldn't film without a permit.

It wasn't until we got home that we learned a valuable lesson; no matter whether you shoot fifteen minutes or fifteen hours of tape, inevitably, no more than five minutes will ever be entertaining to anyone. I don't care how extravagant the wedding, how exotic the vacation, or how naked the sorority girls, straight video is bad. Hollywood understands this, and this is why credits on movies are long enough to roll through an entire piece of music from Ennio Morricone; because a lot of people spend a lot of time taking film and making it interesting.

This, in my estimation, explains the popularity of iMovie. Suddenly that fifteen minutes of watching Baby Cordelia try to roll over or those long, slow pans across Mr. Rushmore can seem interesting. All it takes is some music, some sound effects, and a healthy dose of cutting, and anyone who can use a Mac can do it.

Well, almost anyone. The trouble is, those of us with old VHS tapes or analog camcorders were pretty much out of luck. There are numerous devices out there for getting video into a computer, but without spending thousands of dollars on hardware and software, there was really no way to get it back to tape...

...until now. Young Gilliams, welcome to Eskape Labs' My Video.

I can remember my conversation with Christopher from Eskape back at Macworld Expo NY 2000. When he told me that, despite the Firewire direction Apple had gone with iMovie, USB was a good enough pipe to transfer video to the Mac, I thought, "Yeah, and I'm a Chinese jet pilot." But Christopher was right, MyTV/fm was an excellent product, and Dino De Laurentiis Productions made me promise to never again steal a line from Army of Darkness.

When Christopher went on to tell me that Eskape was working on a product that could also pump the video back to tape, I cried, "Well hello Mr. Fancy Pants!" And you know, I was skeptical right up to the point where I clicked play on the VideoView software...but I'm getting ahead of myself a bit.

After installing the software, connecting the My Video component to your computer is as simple as plugging in a USB chord. Although the device does not need to connect directly to the built-in USB port on the Mac, a powered hub is required. My Video then offers two methods of getting video from the source (VCR, camcorder, DVD, etc.) to the computer; composite and S-video. Make your choice, plug it in, and you're all set. Capturing audio, however, can be a problem as My Video has no audio inputs or outputs. You have to direct sound straight into your computer's audio in jack, which is all well and good unless you have a Cube or another Mac model without audio in.

But we'll assume you're one of the countless billions who didn't purchase a Cube, and you're now set to capture some video. My Video basically works like MyTV/fm (minus some input options), so I won't go into too much detail here. You can either check out that review or just be satisfied with this brief summation:

Using the hideously bland interface of a program called Eskape TV Viewer, you specify the input source of your signal. This may be somewhat confusing at first as there are choices present that are not supported by My Video, namely FM station, antenna and cable TV (although antenna and cable signals can still be captured if routed through the S-video or composite connections of a VCR, for example). Once you've got the signal located and playing through Eskape TV Viewer, recording the video to your hard disk is a simple matter of hitting Command-R (Command-S for still captures). Click the window to stop recording, and you're ready to edit.

As with other Eskape Labs video capture products, My Video contains a fully registered and functional version of Strata VideoShop v4.5. Eskape Labs also did a wonderful thing this time around by not only including a PDF manual for VideoShop on the CD, but also providing information on where you can order a printed version! I know, you still have to pay, but I'm old fashioned enough to feel that having a printed manual at my disposal is well worth the $30. My copy arrived just today, in fact, so I'm ready to get started on my sequel to Flash Gordon (Freddie Mercury did tell me, after all, that the continuation is mine for the making).

But why Strata VideoShop, you wonder? Why not iMovie? Well, without extra effort, iMovie cannot read analog video, of course. QuickTime Pro can convert analog video to a digital video stream that's iMovie compatible, but this takes time and gets into that whole video format and compression mess that is, for some home video editors, best left alone. (If you want to figure it all out, I recommend David Pogue's iMovie 2: The Missing Manual. (Even if you don't use iMovie, the compression explanations, QuickTime instructions, and filming advice is well worth the $19.95 price tag.) If you insist on iMovie, however, it can be done (my first project was edited solely in iMovie 2). In fact, it may be good, as the long stretches of time it takes to convert the analog video to a digital stream and the digital stream back to motion jpeg will allow you to finish reading maybe two or three video manuals and the first two books of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, as well.

Strata VideoShop, on the other hand, using the Phoenix USB Video digitizer, allows you pull the video straight from the source right into the program, ready to edit. Now VideoShop isn't as easy to learn, nor is it as attractive to look at as iMovie 2, but it's a bit more powerful and saves a lot of time in the long run. But the choice is yours. As my dad would often say, "Whatever floats your boat."

Once you're done editing your movie, the file must be saved in the Eskape Labs USB flavor of the MJPEG format in order to be output to video. Strata VideoShop offers this as an option, iMovie 2 does not. Instead, you must save it as a normal QuickTime movie and let VideoView automatically convert it to the proper format. There's another chapter of the Lord of the Rings completed. Also, this doesn't always provide optimum results. The first few times I tried this, my audio began to sorely lag the video, oddly enough. After messing around with the QuickTime settings in iMovie 2, I found that when I manually saved the file using the default Eskape Labs settings so that VideoView didn't have to convert it, everything synced up nicely.

And now, finally, I was able to dump my movie back onto video. As with the input, setting up the output was junior high shop stuff. Simply connect the My Video video out to the input on your VCR, and the audio out on your Mac to the VCR's audio in and you're done. It's then just a matter of launching the VideoView Player and opening your movie. Set the "Play Movie On" option to TV (or Computer and TV if you system can handle it), hit record on the VCR, and hit play on VideoView.

Now invite the family over, pop yourself some corn, and turn down the lights for the big premiere.

How about quality? Well, remember, this is not digital. The movie has to be Motion JPEG compressed, and VideoView doesn't seem to be happy unless the quality is set to medium. Unfortunate, but not disastrous. Just do everything possible to ensure your source is good (again, see Pogue's iMovie 2: The Missing Manual...and never underestimate the importance of S-video), and your movie will at least be guaranteed to look better than anything directed by Joel Schumacher.

So I guess Christopher was right. Although not the optimum solution, with My Video, USB is an adequate pipe for getting video onto your computer and back out to tape...or to a TV monitor if that's all you need. If you're looking for a way to update the soundtrack to "Carrie's Homecoming 1986" or add zany sound effects to the inexplicably popular "Dad Gets Hit in Groin with Baseball - Memorial Day Picnic," or if you just don't want to spend $1,500 on a new DV camcorder, My Video is your solution.

Now, who wants to see Doug Kreis hit on a mannequin at Lazarus? Come on, it has to be more entertaining than Batman Forever.

And here's a trick I discovered using MyVideo. When exporting video to digital video stream in QuickTime, I sometimes received an error message that would not allow me to complete the conversion. To get around this, I exported the video to the Eskape Labs MJPEG format, closed the original and opened my new file, I then exported that to digital video stream without error. Go figure.

Available at the Applelinks Store

[an error occurred while processing this directive]