<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><br></div>More info from a very good video website : <a href="http://www.videohelp.com/dvanalog#digital8">http://www.videohelp.com/dvanalog#digital8</a><div><br></div><div>In the article below Mr. Woodger describes the two primary techniques described in todays DMMUG thread about digitizing Hi8 tapes: (1) using a DV Camcorder with analog to digital passthrough, (2) Using a Sony Digital 8 Camcorder with internal Hi8 transcoding capability. Ultimately either of these methods would produce a high quality result. The main factor of cost should probably be weighed against the amount of material to be digitized. If only a few tapes are involved it would probably be better to have someone with the listed equipment and software and skill perform the task. If we are talking about a library of tapes then it might be mot cost effective to acquire the equipment and perform the digitization at home, depending on operator proficiency or expected proficiency. </div><div><br></div><div>Questions and factors to consider:</div><div><div><br></div><div><div>1) does the operator/customer have the disk space to store the digitized media? Somewhere around 13 gb per hour. </div><div>2) does the operator/customer intend to edit the digitized media? Editing software and proficiency again. What level of editing? Consumer, Prosumer, professional?</div><div>3) does the operator/customer intend to master and transcode the edited video to DVD? Again, software and proficiency are involved.</div></div></div><div><br></div><div>******* begin Mr. Woodger's article *******</div><div><div><br></div><div><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><strong>Introduction:
Why Use a Digital Camcorder for Analog Video Capture?</strong></font><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Many
people have 8mm/Hi8 tapes (and even VHS tapes) filled with
movies that we recorded with our analog camcorders. There
is concern is that the tapes will degrade with time so there
is a desire to "digitize" the material, perhaps
producing VCD or DVDs which can be played on standalone DVD
players.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">One
approach to capture the video on the computer is to use various
capture cards (Dazzle, ATI, Hauppauge, etc.), as described
elsewhere on this <a href="http://www.videohelp.com/capture">site</a>. You may run
into some of these limitations of the capture card approach
(as I did):</font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">-
you might have a laptop (which won't take a standard PCI card)
or you may have no extra slots for an additional PCI card
on your desktop PC<br>
- you may not have a computer that is fast enough to capture
analog video from capture cards. Many people feel that the
cards will produce the best quality when capturing raw AVI
output but this output is VERY big. Raw AVI is up to five
times bigger than the DV AVI that digital camcorder produce
and it can take a high-spec computer (both CPU and disk speed)
to keep up with this capture rate.<br>
- you may find that the capture card doesn't faithfully reproduce
the colour and/or motion of the original</font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">
<br>
The Digital Camcorder Alternative</font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">There
is an alternative to the capture cards. You can use a Digital
Camcorder to capture your analog video. </font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Broadly,
there are two approaches that you might use:</font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">1.
You can use a Digital8 Camcorder to directly play 8mm and
Hi8 analog tapes and output them to your computer via firewire
-> <strong><a href="http://www.videohelp.com/dvanalog#digital8">Capturing 8mm/Hi8 with a
Digital8 Camcorder</a></strong> </font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">2.
You can use the analog passthrough or capture ability of many
digital camcorders to capture your analog video (8mm, Hi8,
VHS) and convert it into an equivalent digital video which
is easy to send to your computer via Firewire -> <a href="http://www.videohelp.com/dvanalog#dv">Capturing
Various Analog Video (VHS, Hi8, 8mm) with a Digital Camcorder</a></font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><br>
The Benefits of Using your Digital Camcorder for Analog Capture</font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Most
Digital Camcorders (but not all) have hardware converters
that take analog video and convert them to DV AVI (digital
video AVI). Most people will agree that the quality of this
conversion is very good. My personal experience was that the
DV Cam's analog-to-digital conversion ranged from being somewhat
better to much better than the three capture cards that I
tried. I was still hesitant to invest in the Digital Camcorder
(since they cost more than most capture cards) but other peoples'
experience posted on forums consistently supported the fact
that they felt that the quality of capture via DV Cam was
much better.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">As
mentioned above, Digital Camcorders will output DV AVI at
about 3.3 MBps. DV AVI is a good format to work with since
it is much smaller (and more manageable than RAW AVI). On
the other hand, it is not so compressed (like MPEG-2) that
it is slow to work with in video editing packages. </font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><br>
<br>
<strong> <a name="digital8" id="digital8"></a>Capturing 8mm/Hi8
with a Digital8 Camcorder</strong></font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Sony
has a line of Digital camcorders that use the same Hi8 tapes
that earlier analog camcorders used. These Hi8 tapes are bigger
than the mini-DV tapes that are used by pure digital camcorders
and therefore Digital8 camcorders tend to be larger than other
digital camcorders.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Many
Digital8 camcorders will play 8mm and Hi8 analog tapes directly
and output them as DV AVI over a firewire connection. Nearly
all early Digital8 camcorders had this capability, however
Sony has lately been limiting this feature to its middle-to-higher
end Digital8 models. If you want this capability, make very
certain that the camcorder that you are considering actually
has it.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">If
your old analog camcorder has already died leaving you with
orphaned 8mm/Hi8 tapes, the Digital8 may be the perfect bridge
solution for you. Even if your analog camcorder still works,
you might prefer to playback your tapes in a Digital8 camcorder
for capture purposes. The middle-to-higher end Digital8 players
have:<br>
- TBC -- Time Base Corrector which is used to correct jitter
in the tape (especially useful for older tapes) <br>
- DNR -- Digital Noise Reduction. </font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">This
means that the Digital8 players can often play back your analog
tapes better than the analog camcorder that produced them.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><br>
The Capture Process with your Digital8 Camcorder:</font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">1.
Put your 8mm/Hi8 tape into your camcorder and try to play
it. The camcorder should generally automatically sense that
the tape is analog. If it does not, you may have to go into
the menus and manually tell the camcorder that it is an analog
tape. When dealing with a poor quality analog tape, you may
have also have to turn off the time-based-correction and/or
digital noise reduction (in the case of a very poor tape,
these features can do more harm than good).</font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">2.
Once you now that tape will play, attach a firewire connection
(called iLink by Sony) between your camcorder and your computer
and use standard video capture software to capture the output
-> <a href="http://www.videohelp.com/capture#dv">How to capture DV Cam using a firewire/DV
card</a></font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><br>
Issues with the Capture using Digital8:</font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">When
I captured analog tapes with my Digital8 camcorder, I found
that a got a thin line of distortion at the very bottom of
my capture. The explanation that I got was: <br>
"you're seeing the head switching. 8mm analog tapes are
recorded using two heads on the drum and you're seeing the
point at which the heads switch over. It's deliberately placed
before the end of the picture so that the video is stable
in the synchronising interval which follows on from it."</font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">As
pointed out, this distortion did NOT show on a TV during playback
(because of overscanning). I could have left this distortion
but I chose to put a black line over it using video editing
software.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><br>
<br>
<br>
<strong> <a name="dv" id="dv"></a>Capturing Various Analog
Video (VHS, Hi8, 8mm) with a Digital Camcorder</strong></font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Most
(but not all) modern digital camcorders provide a analog-to-digital
"passthrough" capability. This feature lets you
feed an analog input signal (usually via S-Video, sometimes
RCA) into your camcorder and output a standard DV AVI signal.
The camcorder converts the analog signal on-the-fly using
a hardware encoder. Your input device could be your old analog
camcorder (playing 8mm or Hi8 tapes), a VHS video player,
etc.</font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The
DV AVI output signal is the same encoding as standard digital
camcorder output so you can attach a firewire connection (also
called iLink) between your camcorder and your computer and
use standard video capture software to capture the output
-> <a href="http://www.videohelp.com/capture#dv">How to capture DV Cam using a firewire/DV
card</a></font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Some
digital camcorders do not support simple "passthrough"
but they will capture an analog signal and convert it as you
record to the digital tape. The digital tape can then be rewound
and played over the firewire connection to computer as described
above. Clearly, the passthrough capability saves time and
effort but if you already have a digital camcorder (without
passthrough), then you still might use the analog signal-to-tape
capture capability. </font></p><p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Not
all new digital camcorders necessary accept analog input (watch
the lower-end models). If you have old analog material, then
think about adding "analog-to-digital passthrough"
to your list of requirements when choosing a digital camcorder.</font></p><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+2"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2" color="#000000"><i><br><br></i></font></font></p></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br><div><div>On Nov 23, 2009, at 8:23 PM, John Robertson wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>Jon, thanks for the correction. I didn't know Sony stopped supporting <br>backward compatibility in their later Digital 8 camera's. Silly them, <br>what would be the point to buy one of those. I guess they were <br>trending over to the GV-D series for backward compatibility. ie. GV- <br>D200, GV-D800 and others.<br><br>Regards,<br> John<br>_______________________________________________<br>DMMUG mailing list<br>Use this Address to send mail to the list:<br><a href="mailto:DMMUG@dmmug.org">DMMUG@dmmug.org</a><br>Use this page to modify subscription options:<br>http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/dmmug<br></div></blockquote></div><br></div></div></div></body></html>