EXCLUSIVES

Director's Cut "Take 2" Steals the Analog Capture Scene
Words by Ric Getter

October 2004

Thanks to the iLife® suite, you mail a DVD to the grandparents not long after the dust settles from Junior's birthday party. However, I am making the assumption that you have a digital camcorder, and they have a DVD player. If you find yourself stuck in the realm of analog, there are ways to survive in the digital world.

Miglia's Director's Cut "Take 2" is one of several converters that will let you preserve your analog memories with digital ease. Its distinction is an upscale set of features and top-notch image quality. The idea behind an analog-to-digital conversion is to take the audio and video from non-digital sources (VHS, Hi-8, BetaMax, etc.) and convert to and from FireWire® so you can store, edit, and preserve them with digital applications like iMovie® and iDVD™. Most digital camcorders (Digital 8 and the assorted DV flavors) will let you go from digital to analog with varying degrees of convenience and quality. They may or may not permit you to go in the opposite direction. Miglia's Director's Cut will let you go both ways with ease.

Watch What You're Doing
If you've shopped around a bit, it will be easy to see one of the more unique features of Miglia's box. All the controls are on the front and all the connectors, with the exception of the headphone jack, are on the back. That may sound like the most obvious way to design one of these things; but remarkably, it's quite unique. The rear connectors include composite video and stereo audio, S-Video in and out as well as a jack for an optional external power supply (that should only be necessary for PC users). There are actually two sets of audio and video outputs that will let you connect a monitor or output to two analog recorders. (If you're new to video editing, you'll quickly learn how essential having a video monitor is. Graphics, fonts, and color schemes that look great on your computer can fall totally apart when viewed on a TV.) With there is a single FireWire port, Director's Cut needs to be at the end of your FireWire chain. Even though we tested the unit without problems behind two other FireWire devices, you'll get the most reliable performance if it's the only device on the port.

Along with the power switch on the front panel, a button lets you select between capture and export modes and another lets you switch between NTSC and PAL video formats. Beside the 1/4" stereo headphone jack is a headphone volume control to adjust the monitoring level. If you need to boost or cut your recording level, you'll need to do that either with an external mixer or in your editing application. Green LED's indicate the position of the video format and capture/export switches.

Director's Cut performed extremely well with both iMovie and Final Cut Pro®. The quality of images we captured were surprisingly good and the unit did quite well at handling fast horizontal motion (always a stumbling block for digital video systems).

Translating Color
As a test, we used Final Cut Pro to capture a scene from a Hi8 (analog) tape digitally through a good Digital 8 camcorder. We then used Director's Cut to capture the same scene directly from Hi8. It was immediately obvious that Director's Cut provided richer and more accurate color saturation and hue. The sharpness of the image was identical as were the luminance (brightness) levels. Final Cut's waveform monitor and vectorscope were able to confirm what we observed. The unit's 4:1:1 NTSC sampling rate is the same that is used in most DV formats, so very little is lost in the translation.

One of the more surprising results we experienced is when we took our footage all the way to DVD. iDVD's process of MPEG conversion smoothed over a lot of the analog video's defects and the end result looked pretty impressive when played on a regular TV. If you choose to remain in the analog realm, you'll still be pleased with your results. Directors Cut "Take 2" makes it easy to put your completed project back on analog tape simply by switching from the capture to export mode. Unlike the old world of tape-to-tape editing, the edited version looks just as good as the original. In fact, your editing program will offer a degree of color and image correction. They won't work a silk-purse-from-a-sow's-ear miracle, but it will give you a second-chance to make up for some of those traditional home movie glitches. And of course, the editing process itself can turn those hours of video into a shorter and more interesting story.

Director's Cut will work with any Mac® (or PC) with FireWire and is recognized by all the major editing applications. It needs no software of its own--just plug it in and go. This British-made product now has stateside phone support and a rapidly growing base of U.S. distributors led by PortableUSA (www.portableusa.com), so you can expect an increasing presence of a number of Miglia's intriguing video and storage products in the domestic market.

Miglia's Directors Cut "Take 2" provides premium quality and premium features. At $299, the price is somewhat higher than its competitors. In this case, however, you most definitely get what you pay for with its best-of-class convenience and image quality.

Director's Cut "Take 2" by Miglia Technologies (www.miglia.com). Works with any FireWire-equipped G3 and above. SRP $299.