TapeCap

A native macOS front-end for tapecap — raw DV / HDV tape capture over FireWire. One window: pick your deck, choose a format, and capture, with a colored, streaming log so you always see what the deck is doing.

It reimplements none of tapecap's logic. It runs the real tapecap binary and streams its output — the same commands you'd type by hand, driven from buttons. Re-implementing IEC 61883 capture would only be a riskier copy of a solved problem, so this tool deliberately stops at "drive tapecap, show you everything."

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What it does

• Select device — lists FireWire AV/C decks (tapecap list) into a picker; the chosen deck's GUID is passed to every command.
• Info — the deck's mode, timecode and format (tapecap info --json).
• Capture — pick Auto / DV / HDV and an output file, then capture with a live colored log (runs with --verbose). Stop finalizes the file cleanly.
• Transport — Cue to a timecode, Jog forward/back, Wind to start/end, without capturing.

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Screenshots

Capturing — device picker, format selector, and a colored streaming log with live timecode; Stop finalizes the file:

After Refresh Devices + Info — the parsed device list and the deck's mode / timecode / format:

_{Rendered previews of the app's real layout and log output (built on a Windows dev box; swap in live macOS captures anytime).}

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Requirements

Thing	How to get it
macOS with a FireWire AV/C deck	this is what tapecap supports
tapecap	its source is vendored in vendor/tapecap/ — build-app.command compiles it and bundles the binary into the app, offline. Nothing to download or install separately. (At runtime the app also falls back to a copy on your PATH or one you pick with the tapecap… button.)
Apple Command Line Tools (to build the app)	xcode-select --install — free, gives you swiftc

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Build the app

Run this on the Mac, in this folder (it also holds TapeCap.swift, tapecap-gui.command and AppIcon.png):

bash build-app.command

It produces TapeCap.app next to the script, plus a release-ready TapeCap-<version>-macOS.zip (made with ditto, so the app stays launchable), and reveals them in Finder. It picks the best UI your Mac can compile, in this order:

1. Native Swift app (preferred) — one window with the device picker, format selector, action buttons and the colored streaming log. Needs swiftc from the Command Line Tools above.
2. Platypus text-window app — log in-app, input via dialogs. Needs the Platypus CLI.
3. Terminal-log fallback — a plain .app whose launcher shows the log in Terminal. Always available.

The icon (AppIcon.png) is baked into .icns automatically with sips + iconutil.

Version number

The version shown in the app's About box and Finder's Get Info comes from the VERSION file in this folder. To cut a release, bump VERSION, commit, and rebuild. For a one-off build you can override it:

bash build-app.command --version 1.2.3     # or: TAPECAP_VERSION=1.2.3 bash build-app.command

tapecap is built in (self-contained app)

tapecap's source is vendored in vendor/tapecap/ (MIT-licensed, ~1 MB, AVCVideoServices included). The normal build compiles it in place and bundles the resulting binary into the app — no separate download, no separate folder, no network. build-app.command picks the binary in this order:

1. bash build-app.command — compiles vendor/tapecap/ (make → build/tapecap)
2. bash build-app.command --build — force a fresh rebuild of the vendored source
3. bash build-app.command /path/to/tapecap — bundle a prebuilt binary you supply
4. a tapecap binary sitting next to build-app.command
5. only if vendor/tapecap/ is missing does it fall back to git clone + build

The chosen binary is copied into TapeCap.app/Contents/Resources/tapecap, and the app prefers that bundled copy — so the finished .app is fully self-contained. The build's final message says whether tapecap was bundled.

Building the vendored source needs only Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install — the same clang++ the Swift app uses; no full Xcode, no swiftc).

Notes: tapecap is macOS-only (it links Apple's AVCVideoServices / IOKit FireWire frameworks), so it can only be built or bundled on a Mac — never on Windows/Linux. The build needs a macOS SDK that still ships the FireWire headers (SDK ≤ 15, i.e. up to Sequoia); Apple removed them in macOS 26.

Updating the vendored copy later: replace vendor/tapecap/ with a fresh checkout of xingrz/tapecap, or run bash build-app.command --build after git -C vendor/tapecap pull if you keep it as a checkout.

Move TapeCap.app to /Applications and double-click it. First launch on an unsigned app: right-click → Open once (standard macOS Gatekeeper).

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Files

File	Role
TapeCap.swift	the native single-window AppKit app (buttons + colored log)
tapecap-gui.command	osascript wrapper used by the Platypus / Terminal fallbacks — also runnable on its own (bash tapecap-gui.command)
build-app.command	assembles TapeCap.app (Swift → Platypus → Terminal) and builds + bundles tapecap
vendor/tapecap/	vendored tapecap source (MIT) — compiled and bundled into the app
AppIcon.png	1024×1024 app icon

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Notes

• The device list is parsed leniently: any line from tapecap list containing a 0x… GUID becomes a selectable device, so it survives formatting changes in tapecap. The raw output is always in the log.
• Log colors come from this app's ✓ ✗ ! » markers and from tapecap's own status and timecode lines — tapecap needs no ANSI/tty tricks.
• Piping to ffmpeg (tapecap capture --no-control -) is a command-line workflow; TapeCap targets file capture. Use the CLI directly for pipes.

Credits & license

TapeCap is a GUI wrapper. The capture engine is tapecap by @xingrz — MIT-licensed and vendored, unmodified, in vendor/tapecap/ (see its own LICENSE; it in turn bundles Apple's AVCVideoServices sample code). All the FireWire capture work is tapecap's; this project only adds the macOS app around it.

The TapeCap wrapper — TapeCap.swift, build-app.command, tapecap-gui.command and the icon — is MIT-licensed, see LICENSE.

SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT