MiniDV · HDV · DVCAM · for macOS

Feed it a box of tapes. Come back tomorrow.

Capture drives your deck over FireWire and works through a whole box unattended: rewind, play, capture, eject, next tape. Every file comes out named after the day it was shot, read from the frames themselves — not after the day you digitised it.

the three applications — Capture is not sold on its own
v3.55

Tapedeck Pro Capture — Transport, timecode, shots found — and the tape’s own date, in amber

18/11/2003 — the date the camera wrote onto the tape. Everything is filed on this.

The shots found. Each jump in the recorded date opens a new one.

The format read off the deck, not guessed.

What happens without it

Every file comes out dated this year — the year you finally found the time. Not one of them says 1999.

A tape from 2003 and a tape from 2011 land side by side, in the order you happened to pull them out of the box.

Three hundred files called Capture_01 through Capture_300, and no way back except opening every one.

The dates were never lost. They are sitting inside the images, written frame by frame by the camera — and no software goes looking for them. That is the whole of it.

The one idea

Every camcorder writes the date and time into the tape as it records — frame by frame, invisibly, since the format was invented. It has always been there. Almost no software reads it back.

Capture does. It reads that date as the tape runs, and uses it to name the file, to sort it into the right folder, and to decide where one shot ends and the next begins. Which means a box of unlabelled tapes comes out the other side in chronological order, without you typing anything.

Where a tape has no recorded date — some were dubbed, some cameras were never set — it is filed under the date you enter yourself, and the log says plainly that the date came from you rather than from the tape. You are never left guessing later which is which.

What it does

Runs a whole box unattended — rewind, play, capture, eject, next tape
Reads the shooting date burnt into the frames, and files by it
Splits into shots: a gap of more than three minutes starts a new one, anything shorter is a micro-cut and gets joined back
Writes the picture shape (4:3 or 16:9 anamorphic) into the file itself, so the master does not come back squashed in an editing program
Keeps masters untouched — .dv, .m2t, .mov, exactly as they came off the tape
Two engines, QuickTime and raw FireWire, with automatic fallback when a deck misbehaves
Built-in OCR: frame index, timecodes and on-screen text, computed on your machine
A plain-language log of everything it did, so a night’s work can be checked in the morning

Who it is for

Anyone holding tapes that exist nowhere else. Theatre and dance companies with twenty years of recorded performances. Documentary makers with rushes on MiniDV. Families with a shelf of holidays. Small archives, schools, artists — people for whom the tape is the only copy, and the deck that reads it is getting harder to find every year.

The hardware question

This is the part people get wrong, so it is worth being blunt: capture happens over i.LINK / FireWire, and a USB video grabber will not do. A grabber re-films the picture off an analogue output; FireWire carries the original digital stream, and with it the timecode and the date. Everything Capture does depends on that.

Tapes read	MiniDV · HDV · DVCAM
Connection	i.LINK / IEEE 1394 — not USB
Decks	Anything speaking standard DV or HDV. Developed and tested on a Sony HVR-M15E. Consumer MiniDV camcorders generally work; a deck with remote transport control is what lets a whole box run unattended.
If your Mac has no FireWire	Chain a FireWire 800 → Thunderbolt 2 adapter with a Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) → Thunderbolt 2 adapter, both Apple parts. Check the deck answers transport commands before starting a long run.
macOS	10.13 or later · universal binary, Intel and Apple Silicon

Capture is only sold as part of the suite of three, at 49 €. Not to force your hand — because digitising without a second copy and without viewing copies leaves the job half done, and the other two were written for exactly that reason.

Get Capture

Seven days, free — here is exactly what it does and does not do

Capture digitises as many tapes as you like, ten minutes of each. Enough to watch it read the date off the tape, split the shots and file them.
Proxy converts as many files as you like, two minutes of each. Queue four hundred and watch it work through the lot.
Mirror is not limited at all. A mirror is never finished — one week simply shows you whether it holds.
The catalogue reads your whole archive and shows it to you. It just does not keep it: close the application and it forgets.

This is not a crippled edition — it is the whole thing, minus the right to walk away with the result. Files made during the trial carry _ESSAI in their name so they never get mistaken for masters later, and a capture already running is never cut off mid-tape.

The three applications

Capture — digitises the tapes
Mirror — keeps two folders identical
Proxy — converts, compresses, files

Nothing is on sale yet: leave your address and you will hear on the day.

A perpetual licence. What you buy is yours for good.

Every update is free for one year — not one at a time, all of them
After that year the applications keep working exactly as they did. Nothing expires.
One person, two Macs
Once bought: activated once, then offline for good — never contacts a server again.

Technical specifications

Tapes read	DV / MiniDV / DVCAM (SD, 625/50 & 525/60) · HDV (MPEG-2, 1080i & 720p)
Files accepted on import	.mov · .mp4 · .mts · .m2ts · .avi · .mxf · .mkv · .m4v
Masters written	Original format kept, never re-encoded — .dv · .m2t · .mov
Copies made	H.264 to watch · ProRes to edit
Naming	<shooting date> à <time> — <TITLE>_master HDV.<ext>
Capture engines	QuickTime and raw FireWire stream, with automatic fallback
Shot detection	A gap of more than 3 minutes in the recorded date starts a new shot; anything shorter is a micro-cut and gets joined back.
OCR	Frame index, timecodes and on-screen text, computed locally
Tested on	Sony HVR-M15E over i.LINK, on a 2011 Mac mini running macOS High Sierra 10.13
Privacy	No data collection, no network connection, no account. The application only ever touches your local disks.

Folder structure produced

.tapedeckpro — the archive’s identity card, index included 00_Catalogue/ 01_Masters/ — .dv · .m2t · .mov, never re-encoded 02_Videos/ — H.264, to watch and send 03_Montage/ — ProRes, to edit with 03_Fiches/ — record sheets, logs, OCR

FAQ

Can I try it before paying?

Yes, seven days, counted from the first launch of each application. Capture digitises any number of tapes but keeps ten minutes of each; Proxy converts any number of files but keeps two minutes of each; Mirror is not limited. The catalogue reads your whole archive and displays it, but does not save it — the whole point of the register is that it remembers, and remembering is what you are paying for. Files produced during the trial are marked _ESSAI.

Does the application connect to the internet?

During the trial, yes — once at launch, to check the trial is still open. That is what stops one download being passed around. Once you have bought it, no: the licence is activated once and then written locally, and the applications never contact any server again. That matters for an archiving tool, and it is the version you will still be running in ten years.

My Mac has no FireWire port

Chain a FireWire 800 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter with a Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 adapter — both Apple parts. Check the deck responds to transport commands before starting a long batch. USB grabbers do not work: capture goes through i.LINK.

Which decks and camcorders are supported?

Anything with an i.LINK / IEEE 1394 output speaking standard DV or HDV. Development and testing were done on a Sony HVR-M15E. Consumer MiniDV camcorders generally work; decks with remote transport control let a whole box run unattended.

What if the tape has no recorded date?

It is filed under the date you enter in the record sheet, and the log states plainly that the date came from you rather than from the tape.

How long does a tape take?

Real time — a sixty-minute tape takes sixty minutes, because the tape has to physically run past the head. There is no way around that. What Capture saves you is not the running time, it is having to sit there for it.

Why is Capture not sold on its own?

Because digitising is the easy half. Once the files exist they need a second copy on another disk, and light versions you can actually watch — otherwise the work sits on one drive, unwatched, one failure away from being lost again. Mirror and Proxy were written for that, and the three together cost 49 €.

The other two

MirrorKeeps two folders identical, and never deletes anything on the copy ProxyConverts, compresses and files whole folders of video at once The suiteThe three together, and the story of why they exist

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