[mala]

Hi,

I'm about to retire my Sony Handycam Video8 camcorder and need to convert the Video8 tapes into digital format. As I understand my options are either to get a new DV camcorder with analogue -In or getting an external box (like Canopus) to connect to the Mac. Now a third option has come to my mind; as I also need to get a new DVD player, the ones with analogue -In (I've seen Panasonic devices with S-Video -In and RGB -In) might be suitable to do the work? Then I would ofcourse need to save the video into a DVD and then get it into the Mac for editing and the back to the DVD, but if the result would be the same I could live with these extra steps.
Anyone with experience of this?

TIA

Mans

[grovberg]

The DVD format isn't a terribly good one for editing, so you'd want to convert to DV and there would be some loss in quality, though probably negligible from Video8. The bigger loss would be the loss of time converting from MPEG-2 (DVD format) to DV format (a couple hours at least). I say get the analog in on the camcorder if all your new home movies are going to be that format anyway. Really the only upside to the DVD option is it's more convenient to store DVDs than it is DV tapes.

[SirCastor]

Agreed. I'd go with option 1 or 2, or find a service that does conversion, and pay whatever it is that they charge. It shouldn't be too expensive. I'd offer to do it, but I don't have a video8 device.

[mikejaz]

A third option is to go to the "gently used" market and get a Sony Digital8 camcorder for these transfers - it looks and works like a regular Hi8 camcorder, but recorded an ersatz DV signal on Hi8 tapes, and can play back all flavors of 8mm. They have firewire connections, and though Final Cut, et.al., cannot control the tape transport, you can play the tapes directly (via the camcorder controls) into any DV-enabled computer editing package via the "uncontrolled machine" mode (like you would if you were playing your tapes from your old camcorder thru a converter).

I wouldn't worry about quality loss at all - you've already lost plenty of quality just putting stuff down on the 8mm format (OK, so I wasn't the biggest fan of 8/Hi8...).

However, if all you want to do is archive the tapes, and not spend hours capturing and outputting to new DV tapes (which, although digital, have their own problems), then a DVD recorder might be the right way to go. Grovberg is right when he sez that DVD is not a great format to edit with, as it's muxed MPEG2, which has to be dissasembled and reconstructed into real frames and seperate audio/video tracks before it can become useful. There are ways around that, too; in the end, it all depends on whether this is an archive project or an editing project.

[mala]

Thanks for you input, I'll have this in mind...

/Mans