Technology, it seems, is in a constant state of transition and it’s often hard to stay current. Last year’s hi-definition disc battle illustrated just how quickly a format can descend into obsolescence.

One format that has long since gone the way of the dinosaur is VHS. The tape which claimed victory over Sony’s Betamax in the format war of the 1980’s was a staple of almost every household. After being effectively killed off by DVD’s, VHS found itself in an awkward afterlife. Electronics retailers continued to sell VCR’s, but with no new content released on tape, the concept was dead in the water.

The only reason to keep a VCR in the house was to watch old videos and home recordings. In this world of digital transference, that logic equates to a bunch of wasted space. 

Enter the Pinnacle Video Capture Suite for Mac, a brilliantly simplistic way of turning analog content into digital video files.

There are dozens of video capture options on the PC, but the Mac has been left out in recent years. This is partially due to Apple’s lack of user-swappable video cards. On a PC, users can install their own video cards with video-capture ability. Apple’s closed system restricts this freedom in favour of aesthetic purity.

Pinnacle’s steak-shaped product requires two connections: one to your Mac’s USB port, and the other to your VCR via a composite or S-Video input. The video connection cables are not included with the unit, but most VCR’s do come with them.

Once these connections have been made, Pinnacle’s OSX application launches and begins the capturing process. It’s simple: press play on the VCR, hit the red button and the digitization begins. Video capturing is normally a resource hog, bogging down your system’s processing power and RAM usage. Pinnacle’s product features a built-in MPEG-4 encoder for all the grunt work, meaning your Mac won’t break a sweat during the import. The MPEG-4 codec is also compatible with iPhone, iPod, and Apple TV right out of the box. I was astonished to see how effective this process worked.

Pinnacle doesn’t include any video editing software but who needs it? Apple’s built-in iLife suite happily accepts the MPEG-4 format and allows for complete flexibility of the encoded file. I was able to import some old home movies with the Pinnacle, edit them in iMovie and later burn them in iDVD. Pinnacle’s product fits perfectly into the Apple ecosystem of simplicity and flexibility.

DVD discs remain the format of choice for newly-released video, but their extinction is already foreseeable. I predict the future of video to be 100 per cent digital, a concept exhibited by Apple TV and the XBOX 360’s Video Store. Some prefer physically owning their content, a tangible manner of ownership, but in this green-obsessed world, the elimination of all physical packaging is unavoidable and understandable. As hard drives get bigger and cheaper, they’ll become the medium of choice for media storage.

Pinnacle, it seems, agrees with this logic. By jumping straight from the archaic VHS format to the digital MPEG-4 format, the Video Capture for Mac effectively skips a stage of obsolescence.
The Pinnacle Video Capture for Mac is available for $99 USD, a small price to pay for the elimination of that clunky VHS collection.

Pros-

Brilliantly easy to use

Converts to flexible and compatible MP4 format

Doesn’t hog system resources

Cons-

Doesn’t include video/audio cables






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