Advice Needed: Converting 8mm to VCD or DVD

[HeadRusch]

I have a bunch of 8mm (mono) handicam movies from the early 90's that I wanted to finally move from tape and put on DVD. This is mono, standard 8mm analog tape...I'm not sure of the native resolution but its probably in the ballpark of VHS quality.

I own two pieces of Video Equpment. The first is an AverMedia Stereo TV Card that I GUESS uses its own codec which can record at MPEG1 or MPEG2. I've hooked the handicam up to this and done a few test captures of video at varying resolutions. It plays back fine using AVER's playback device, but clicking on the MPEG file and playing back in Windows Media 9 prodcues a stretched video....which are not the same as the video resolution I recorded the image at. ie: Recording at 320x240 is ok, but playing back in Media Player shows the video at 400x240 or something like that. (???)

Anyhow, the second piece of equipment I own is a copy of Pinnacle Studio 7 and its corresponding capture card, which I think uses the mjpeg codec. After you install the software, patch the software, and do all that stuff, the software actually works.

The advantage is that using Studio 7 I can do basic video editing and stuff with the captured source..titles and all that jazz...wipes, etc. And it will also supposedly "automate" the process of correctly processing the video for DVD.

However I haven't tried it. And I imagine with software as old as Studio 7 is, we aren't talking about menus and chapter stops and such....just converting the video to a format that will play on a DVD Player.

So I'm kinda torn right now between what to use. I'd like to keep this as simple as possible, without tons of hassle. Is there a way to do the capture simply with something like VirtualDub, or am I better off capturing from the tape source using the pinnacle software....which I haven't messed around with too much.

Obviously I think it would be cool to be able to make menus for a DVD and stuff like that to play the individual videos I burn to DVD, but I'm sure I'd need to invest in new software to do that. If I did however, can anyone make a reasonably priced recommendation for software that does this?
Provide a capture path, authoring, and output path all-in-one?

Advice would be most appreciated, thanks everyone!!

[thecoalman]

Ulead Video Studio 8

[mike_atomicsitup_com]

I've been doing this same thing for the past 18 months. I ended up purchasing Pinnacle Studio 8.0 and have had very good results. The captures have been consistently good - 10 dropped frames OR less for every 2 hours of capture. Right now Pinnacle is offering their 9.0 package for a substantially reduced rate <http://www.uptilt.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=5ex,8asz,egx,m2cg,f5t,ebvc,a0rn> for users of their previous products and Dazzle users. I ended up getting the "Plus" edition (yet to see it) so that I could do some picture in picture and chroma key processing (want to dabble in some film making).

[HeadRusch]

Yeah, as a Pinnacle customer I'm getting those upgrade emails myself.

I've just never used the software...at the time I bought it, the windows 98 drivers were buggy, and it never worked with Windows 2000. Only recently have I tried it again and it seems they matured the drivers for the analog DC10 capture card and software, and it appeared to be stable in 2000 Pro.

Question: Can Pinnacle 9 do DVD Menus and burn to DVD? How is the quality?? (granted I'm working with 8mm analog tape here but.....).

[thecoalman]

Ulead Video Studio 8

Free unrestricted 30 day trial www.ulead.com

[jetfan]

Pinnacle 9 CAN do menus and burn to DVD. It does a great job as you can edit your menus, make motion menus, change backgrounds, add music etc...
It allows you to select different quality settings to fit different lengths onto a DVD at different bit rates.

I too ordered the upgrade to studio 9 plus, it's been backordered for a while now and yet they STILL send me emails telling me that time is running out to upgrade, but if I email them for an order status....I'm still waiting for a response!!

[jetfan]

Getting back to your original question, I use Pinnacle to capture/edit my 8mm tapes both analog and digital. I have a Sony Digital 8 that accepts both and I transfer the video via firewire to the computer - 0 dropped frames and no sync problems what so ever, picture quality, in my opinion, looks great and I don't think that you will get much better without moving on to high end equipment.

[HeadRusch]

Sounds good...the ONLY concern I really had was that this DC10 card, as I understand it, will ONLY work with Studio 7....(and I guess its upgrades), and I was thinking that Studio 7 ONLY worked with THIS DC10 capture card.

ie: I wouldn't want to upgrade to studio 9 and then find out I'd need to buy some new Studio-specific hardware.

I see online that Pinnacle offers an analog/digital card now that isn't very expensive, but does that mean thats the only hardware supported by the Studio Series?

I know that Studio 7 wont work with my other capture card (a TV card).......

Or does studio 9 work with "any old hardware"..analog or digital (ie: generic firewire port)...

[handyguy]

You could use a dvd recorder, its real easy & looks great. Maybe a Panasonic e55?

Or:
https://www.videohelp.com/capture

[thecoalman]

Ulead Video Studio 8 is compatible with DC10 plus if that helps, I would doubt highly that Pinnacle Studio 9 doesn't support DC10. Check the specs on the site to see. Pinnacle Studio 9 should work with any firewire hardware, again check the specs on the site.

[fwbaumann]

I would try virtual dub for capture as you can obtain a flicker filter (search flicker). It also has a mat filter to get rid of the hot spot (search hotspot) in the center of the 8mm pics. Also set the camera for a slow shutter speed. (If your camera doesn't have this I tried landscape and forced a low exposure. This will slow the shutter speed and flicker will be reduced. I also slowed my projector to a multiple of 30 fps. They are belt driven and adding to the diameter (large) drum will slow the speed. I used a bicycle inner tube (cut across to make a large rubber band) to do this. Add just enough diameter to reduce flicker. You then shoot the video and increase speed back to normal in the video editor. This gives you more frames so flicker filters (BW averaging) work better. Be sure and apply the filters before increasing the speed

I'm still not entirely happy with the results and plan to take single frame and put the stills into adobe...One frame at a time. (Loading can be done in batch.) oh my god 20,000 stills. Obviously only the most critical flixs will be done this way.

I have found Pinnacle products to be very unstable with multiple crashes in win 2000 Their support is abismal and I would recommend Ulead Studio 8. Pinnacle 9.1.2 has a a BW plugin that cleans some of the flicker and is worth the money. I have had 13 requests to their tech support to fix the BW bug in xp (still doesn't work) I switched from win 2000 and the plug worked in it but I went to XP hoping for increased stability. Look at the customer complaints on cnet and PC for Pinnacle Studio.

[dbaker6165]

If you really care about quality you could buy a sony digital 8 camera that will allow you to download the film digitally to your computer as a DV AVI. I do it all the time with mines... "most" digital 8 cameras are backwards compatible.... I would check that out!

[jetfan]

e: I wouldn't want to upgrade to studio 9 and then find out I'd need to buy some new Studio-specific hardware.

I see online that Pinnacle offers an analog/digital card now that isn't very expensive, but does that mean thats the only hardware supported by the Studio Series?

I know that Studio 7 wont work with my other capture card (a TV card).......

Or does studio 9 work with "any old hardware"..analog or digital (ie: generic firewire port)...


Studio 9 DOES work with any old hardware - I have used both.When capturing,it allows you to choose your source, just select whichever device you wish to use. I use firewire the most, using my Sony camcorders firewire output and I never have dropped frames!

I am not sure if the DC10 will work for you, but I don't see any reasons why it shouldn't.You could check out Pinnacle's forum on their site, I am sure that someone has asked that question by now.

[mike_atomicsitup_com]

Here's something interesting about the Studio 9 Plus 'back order' situation... I got the Fry's Electronics add in my Friday paper and noticed that they had Studio 9 Plus for the same price as Pinnacles' on line price, however, Fry's had a $20 mail in rebate which dropped the price even further....So I emailed their customer service department on Friday - roughly 9am - and requested a cancellation on my upgrade order. By Friday at 6pm I recieved an email stating that my product had been shipped. ??

[jetfan]

Hello, I had sort of the same thing happen to me, I sent them an email wanting to know the staus of my order and the next day I received a shipping notice. I guess they are only sending the people that complain their orders, so if you're waiting for yours, the answer may be simply to inquire about the status or try to cancel.

[gshelley61]

I'd like to keep this as simple as possible, without tons of hassle.

I'd second the suggestion that you look at a standalone DVD recorder that can capture to either -RW's or +RW's in DVD-Video (standard) format. It is so much faster and simpler than the computer method, and the results can be very good to excellent.

I transferred a bunch of raw 8mm videotapes to DVD that way recently... I captured to -RW using XP mode (1 hour highest quality), had a look the results, then made copies for keeping on DVD-R. The resulting MPEG2 video on these -R's can be frame accurately edited with Womble MPEG Video Wizard or MPEG-VCR without any re-encoding (loss of quality), then authored with menus and chapter stops with TMPGEnc DVD Author. I think Ulead and Sony Vegas can also edit DVD compliant MPEG2 without re-encoding.