Digital Home Thoughts: ADS Tech PYRO A/V - Video Inputs/Outputs Galore!

"The ultimate tool for capturing and converting video into professional quality DV format and just as valuable for exporting edited DV content to analog video tape recorders. Capturing DV from a Digital camcorder is fantastic, but what about all of the video content you have in other formats (8mm, beta, VHS, DVD), how do you get that content into the DV format? PYRO A/V link solves the problem by converting any analog video source into DV."



It's part of my personality that I like to have equipment for almost any scenario, no matter how obscure, so when any project comes along I'm ready to rock. The ADS Tech PYRO A/V looks like it belongs in my toolkit - it has the ability to take a variety of analog inputs and output them as a digital signal over Firewire. And, according to the email I received this morning, it does so without needing any drivers on the host computer (it must mount as a Firewire video device) and it can even work without a computer - meaning you could plug a VCR into it and output to a MiniDV tape (some cameras can do this already, but some don't have the analog to digital converters on board). It's not cheap at $199 USD, but it's not outrageously expensive either. Worth a look if you have a lot of analog footage to work with!