8mm (Hi-8) to DVD?

Question

I have a stash of Hi-8mm tapes I'd like to save to DVD. I read that I need a special box, but is it best to use the s-video from the camera or the tri-colored RCA jacks? What type of software would I be looking for to then read from the camera and save to DVD?

Answer 1

If you or a friend have a miniDV camera with an av pass-through feature, then you can easily transfer your tapes without spending any extra money on hardware or software. Connect your Hi-8 camera to the miniDV camera via S-video, plug in the miniDV camera to your computer's firewire port, and open up windows movie maker. Put the miniDV camera in pass-through mode (often just setting it on the VCR mode is fine), and click capture video in Movie maker. When you start the capture on your computer, hit play on your Hi-8 camera and you should see the pictures on the screen. Hope this helps!

Answer 2

I agree with dvDigest and evilgenious. You need an analog to digital converter-PCI card, camcorder with analog pass-through, to get the video onto your PC, or borrowing/renting might be a really good idea to save you money from buying a device that may get used only once. Also, the S-video will maintain better quality than the composite-Yellow connection. Just realize that the S-video is for video only. The Red and White connectors will be used for audio no matter which video connection you choose. What type of converter you buy depends on the quality of the video you wish to maintian. If you're picky, don't expect to pay less than a hundred dollars+, and "if" the video is very important to you, spend the money to get real quality in something like the Canopus ADVC110 (for $230 you're getting the same conversion chipset that comes in Canopus' $1,000+ units). You could possibly make some money back using it to do analog to digital conversions for others, renting it out, or resell it on ebay or amazon once your done. I say this from personal experience, since I've used the $40 ADS video express. I found that the video, for my own taste, was completely unexceptable. Looked worse than my oldest VHS tapes, even with the input set at the maximum resolution and bitrate. Also another note: If you're considering getting a set-top DVD recorder at the local store, understand that these units record in the same file format (.VOB) as regular DVDs that you'd rent. They are the most hassle free method to get your video to DVD, but, if you try to edit your video from these recordings, you won't be able to import the video into Moviemaker or any other editor without first buying a third party software application to either "rip" the video or convert it directly to AVI format, which is the format that Moviemaker and other PC based nonlinear editors use.

Answer 3

Sweet! Great to see you are going to transfer your videos.

Your Hi-8 tapes are in analog, so you will need to convert them to digital before you can transfer the video to your computer, edit, and burn to DVD.

What you will need is a video converter (aka. analog to digital converter or capture device) like the ADS DVD Xpress DX2 ($130) or the ADS Video Xpress ($40) - See links below.

The DX2 will give you better video and it has a feature that is supposed to make sure that the audio and video are in synch when converted to digital.

You should connect your Hi-8 Camcorder to the video converter using a S-Video cable rather than the RCA cables (red, yellow, white) because the quality will be higher.

Then you will connect the video converter to your computer using a USB cable.

Both of those video converters come with DVD/movie editing software so you won't have to purchase anything else.

You can read a little more about connecting your Hi-8 camcorder to your computer here - http://dvdigest.net/Page.asp?NavID=130

Good luck!

Answer 4

Sony used to make Digital 8 Camcorders, and they are basically digital camcorders that use 8mm tapes and digitizes it. They come equipped with a firewire port, so you can just plug it into your computer and transfer it to DVD from there. Depending on what you're willing to spend, you could either rent it and get it all transferred or you could find one for cheap on ebay. Or you might even have a friend who has a digital 8 camcorder. That's probably the easier way to do it, I think.

Answer 5

If you have a DVD recorder use it to make a DVD. If you have a TV tuner in you PC use it to make MPEG videos. A TV tuner with hardware MPEG encoding is a better buy then a dedicated capture card.

Answer 6

S-Video is higher quality, but a lot of people can't tell.
I'd get a used pinnacle DV-500 from ebay. I had pretty good luck with them.

Answer 7

You could use mine. I'd be glad to help. But these aren't as outdated as you may think: last time I checked, compatable cameras were still available at Argos.