archiving 8mm and dv tapes to recorder

[rikit]

I want to archive my old mini dv and 8mm tapes onto dvd. I want to hook my camcorder to my dvd set top recorder and transfer the 8mm & mini dv tapes to dvd. Does this sound possiable?

If later, I decide I want to edit the dvd files, which program would I do that with?

[JohnnyMalaria]

Very possible.

Just hook up the analog outputs of your MiniDV camcorder and 8mm camcorder to the analog inputs of your standalone unit. You do have camcorders for both types of tape?

If it has a FireWire input, you can use that for the MiniDV.

The files on the DVD will be VOBs which, essentially, are MPEG2. There are many, many freeware apps to help edit them.

Because the standalone unit can record at different bitrates, I would suggest recording using the highest setting. One MiniDV tape has about 13GB. When converted to MPEG2, you can easily use one DVD-R per MiniDV tape and get great quality.

I wouldn't bother with all the effort of capturing your videos to the computer, converting to MPEG2 and burning as a DVD. I don't and I've never been dissatisfied with the results from the direct-to-recorder approach.

[rikit]

That answers my questions except one.
Please recommend a program to edit, preferably something very user friendly?

[minidv2dvd]

once they are already converted into mpeg2 format it's not editor friendly. something like womble mpeg video wizard would be your best bet.

[zoobie]

save those tapes

[Richard_G]

save those tapes

I second that, the best archive media is the original tapes. No degradation and if you ever do want to edit, you have them in a perfect editable format.

[rikit]

saving the tapes is not a problem. The problem is the 8mm are 13 years old, the dv maybe 5 years old. I just have not got around to editing them, so I would rather utilize my dvd recorder and just fill dvd's with the raw footage.

I believe Johnny says I can edit them with the right software and minidv2dvd says "once they are already converted into mpeg2 format it's not editor friendly". So I am confused. Can I or can't I take the raw footage off the DVD and edit it?

I have read some post about re-encoding. Once I edit the Dvd, will I be able to save the edited footage back to DVD? A program that could perform the editing, and burning back to Dvd would be great.

[JohnnyMalaria]

It can be edited with the right software but it isn't very friendly, especially compared to editing DV. With DV, every frame is a self-contained entity but with MPEG, the frames come in groups of ~15 frames. The first frame is complete but the rest contain the differences between them and the first frame. Software for editing MPEG has to reconstruct all 15 - a time-consuming/CPU intensive process. If you make a cut between the whole frames, a new set of frames has to be generated.

BTW, I have Video8 tapes from 1991 and DV tapes from 1998. They all play just fine.