Subject: 6400/6500 and sound-video

I have a PowerMac 6500/300 with the Avid Cinema card and soft Avid
Cinema 1.1.5 and it works perfectly with QT4 and even with QT5 beta.
To my opinion the 6400/6500 are better for sound and video than any
imac. An exclusively numeric hub in a world which still is mostly
analogic sounds to me as an error.
With the 6400/6500 you can manage numeric but also analogic data.
About audio:
You can numerize an audio CD but also an audio tape (can you with an
imac?).
For the tape you have two different ways:
- if the Hi-Fi device has audio output: from the audio output to the mac
audio input.
if not: from the Hi-Fi external speakers output to the mac micro input.
You can even numerize directly in MP3 with a soft as N2MP3.
Then you can burn an audio CD or record your music to a tape again. (you
cannot with an imac)

About video:
I donât use DV video, because I have a analogic ( as most of people I
guess) S-VHS camcorder.
With Avid Cinema I can bring the video to the mac, edit the video and
send it to a VHS video tape. But I can also burn a video CD.
For making a video CD you have to convert your video into VCD-Mpeg. You
can do this with Astarte MPack, with Cleaner 5, or (the simplest way)
with QuickTime, using the option ãexport-to MPEGä after putting in your
system the extension ãAstarte MPEG exporterä (donât use the extension
äToast video supportä which gives a really poor quality).
Avid Cinema is the easiest video soft you can imagine, better for my
personnal use than Premiere which is too much complicated.
The combination PM 6400/6500-Avid cinema card and software is the
easiest and cheapiest way for video editing.
With the imac you need to have a (expensive) DV camcorder and with
iMovie1 you could not even export your video on tape. For burning a CD
you have to buy an (expensive) USB CDRW-Driver. But its not a problem,
because with the DV format (13 GB/h versus1 GB/h for Avid Cinema MJPEG)
you donât have room on your HD to capture the video. In no case you will
be able to save the video on a tape. Not exactly true, recently Formac
shipped the (expensive) Firewire studio wich lets you capture analogic
video.
To my opinion MJPEG is still a better format for video editing than DV
and you can do more with a 6400/6500 than with an imac.
The numeric hub is a big (and expensive) joke.
And with 6400/6500 you have as bonus: TV, FM, Bassbooster and remote
control. If you have an applevision screen, you can change the sound
volume with a button (with the imac, until the new keyboard, you had to
use the control panel or the control strip module -very practical,
especialy for a young child) and you can change brightness and contrast
(how do you do this on an imac?).
The advantages of the imac are  silence (arghhh! that noisy fan. Did
everyone change the powersupply for a silent one?) and the beauty
(except for last models-my wife says they look like toilet paper).
Thus I have a problem with Avid Cinema because I live in France where
the TV is SECAM and Avid doesnât understand SECAM. So, the only way for
me to capture VHS tapes is to capture video with an other soft (like the
very good MyVidCap or Reel Eyes), and (If I want to bring it back to a
tape) import video in Avid Cinema . The problems are:
-import video in Avid Cinema  takes a long long long time.
- my stock HD is not fast enough to capture video more than 192x144 at
25 fps. So that quality suffers. I have to buy a bigger and faster HD.

Thatâs why I was very interested by Ryan  being able to use the Avid
card with Premiere. I gonna try this way.

A question: if I upgrade my 6500 with a G3 L2-card, I guess I will have
to upgrade Avid Cinema to v 1.3.1. Does it work properly in this case?

Thank you for your site which is really great.