|
| BTV allows you to view video from any video input source, either in a window or full screen on an entire monitor. Video can be captured to disk as a standard QuickTime movie file and single frames can be saved as image files. |
|
|
|
| Works with any Macintosh compatible video input source |
| BTV can display and capture video from any video input device that has driver software written for it by the manufacturer. This includes many different video input sources including video input cards, TV cards, built-in video, USB, DV, and FireWire video sources. |
|
| View live video in a window or full-screen |
| Live video can be viewed either in a window that can be freely resized and dragged around the screen, or full screen on an entire monitor. When in full screen mode BTV will automatically switch the monitor resolution and fill the screen with video. The menu bar and control strip are automatically hidden. |
|
| Movie capture |
| When you capture video to the hard disk it is compressed on the fly using your custom video and sound settings. Captured video is saved as a standard QuickTime movie file that can be opened with virtually any other video application on the Macintosh. BTV has advanced video capture features such as automatically splitting the capture up into separate 2GB files, capturing to multiple destinations sequentially, limiting the capture time, capturing only video or only sound, and much more. |
|
| Still image capture |
You can capture frames to disk in the following image formats: PICT (standard Macintosh picture file)
JPEG (compressed photographic image)
TIFF (widely used non lossy file format)
PNG (internet file format)
BMP (Windows bitmap)
PSD (Adobe Photoshop image file)
You can choose the quality setting, colour depth, and any other settings relevant to your chosen file format. BTV uses its own routines to capture frames which makes it often much faster at capturing images than other video software. There is also an option to capture images directly from the screen for increased speed. |
|
| One touch capturing |
| Movie and image files can be saved to an automatic destination using an automatic file name. This allows you to capture movies and images instantly without having to manually save the file. Automatic file names can either be numbered incrementally, or can contain the date and time of the capture. Captures can be performed by customizable keystrokes or with the floating Capture Controls window: |
 |
|
| Multiple monitor support |
| If you have more than one monitor connected to your Macintosh then BTV can display full screen video on any of the attached monitors. This enables you to display video on one monitor while you work on another, for example. |
|
| Channel changing on TV cards |
| BTV supports channel changing on ixTV, ixTV/FM, and TurboTV tuner cards (all made by ixMicro). If you have one on these cards installed then there will be a menu called 'Channel' that will allow you to set up and change channels. If you have a TV tuner card or device other than the ones mentioned above you will be able to view video from the card but currently you won't be able to change channels. |
|
| AppleScript support |
| AppleScript is a way of controlling applications by writing scripts. Scripts can be written using Apple's 'Script Editor' application that is installed on every Macintosh computer. AppleScript can be used to control and automate many of the features of BTV. |
|
| Includes the macgix LiveCam AppleScript to turn BTV into a Webcam application |
| LiveCam is a script written by Thomas Kuehner at macgix - it controls BTV, capturing images at regular intervals and uploading them to your web site. Included with the script is documentation and example files to make it very easy to set up. |
 |
|
|
|
| BTV Pro has all the features of BTV as well as many more including movie playback and editing, stop motion animation, time lapse
capture, motion detection, DV stream input/output, and frame averaging. |
|
|
Additional Features of BTV Pro |
|
| Movie playback and editing |
| Movies can be played back in a window at any size, or full screen on the entire monitor. When displaying the movie full screen BTV Pro will automatically switch your monitor to the best resolution. You can perform simple editing operations on movies using easy copy-and-paste and click-and-drag commands. You can also open image files and copy and paste them into movies, in which case they are automatically resized and compressed with your custom compression settings. |
 |
|
| Time lapse capture |
| The Time Lapse feature allows you to schedule frame captures over a period of time. The frames can be made into a movie or saved as individual image files. The frames are compressed on the fly with your chosen compression settings. Each frame capture can optionally average several frames together to reduce noise, and there is also an option to draw the image of a clock on captured frames. |
|
| Motion detection capture |
| The Motion Detection feature analyses the video input and will only capture video when motion is detected. The sensitivity, trigger value, and other relevant settings are fully customisable. The image of a clock can be superimposed onto the captured video to display exactly when motion occurred. |
|
| Stop-motion animation |
| BTV Pro has many features for creating stop motion animations. You can capture individual image files (BTV Pro will save and number them automatically as you go) and then compose them all into a movie later. Or you can create a new movie and add individual frames to it, and instantly play back and edit what you have created. There is also an onion skin feature available that displays the last captured frame over the current video input so that you can accurately see changes between frames. There is a floating window on hand that helps you keep track on the number of frames you are capturing: |
 |
|
| Frame averaging |
| To create a noise-free image, the frame averaging feature takes a number of frames and averages them together to produce a single image. This can significantly reduce, or even eliminate, the noise in the video signal. This works because the image is constant but the noise is quickly varying so that over several frames it averages to zero. The averaging feature works on the live video input or on a selected number of frames in a movie. |
|
| Folder Viewer |
| The Folder Viewer feature allows you to view resizable thumbnails of all the image files in a folder (and all subfolders). You can then rename and delete the files straight from the Folder Viewer, and save or print the thumbnails. This is a very useful tool for managing large numbers of images files. |
|
| Movie export |
| When you export a movie you can choose new video and sound compression settings, frame rate settings, movie size, and many different filters such as sharpen, emboss, grain, colour balance, blur, etc. The export feature can also be used to produce a DV stream, to extract the video or sound track, to create separate image files from a movie, or to created a hinted movie file suitable for streaming. |
|
| DV input/output |
| BTV Pro can capture video from a DV device either to a QuickTime Movie or directly to a DV stream for easy importing into other software such as iMovie. BTV Pro can also output a DV stream to a DV device (provided the device supports DV input). Both DV input and DV output is can be fully controlled by AppleScript. |
|
| DV device control |
| BTV Pro can control a connected DV device. There are standard transport controls as well as DV stream input/output and the ability to wind to a particular timecode on the DV tape, as well as access to all supported play modes. All DV device controls are also available via AppleScript. |
 |
|
| |
|
