Store Now, Edit Later

[AlexLO]

I have 100 hours of VHS, S-VHS, 8mm, etc. I don't have time now to work on each hour individually in iMovie.

BUT...I would like to transfer all the tape now to a digital medium as some of the tape is 20 years old. What is the best method for this massive amount of footage? The MAIN thing is that I want to get this onto a digital media that I can later edit without going back to analog mode.

Use DVD rewritable disks? Lots of RAID Gig drives? Tape drives?

Other question is whether I can keep the footage as a 'movie file' or must it be converted to a digital file type of some other sort.

Alex

[cooljoe666]

I am slightly confused by your post. If you are wanting to digitize a bunch of analog video then you simply(or not so simply) have to capture it. I use a high quality capture device attached to my pc through USB 2.0 which seems to work as well as firewire. As long as your pc is fast enough with enough RAM and hard drive space you should be able to capture alot of footage, but because of file limits you can only do so much at a time. Usually capturing as much as you can at once and then storing it as either raw or compressed format for later editing or whatever. I hope this is what you mean.

[ZippyP.]

I have 100 hours of VHS, S-VHS, 8mm, etc.

You might want to consider a stand alone DVD recorder for such a big project. Editting the footage after conversion to DVD isn't very simple as it has to be ripped back to your computer. The advantage is ease of conversion and time savings. Much simpler, faster, no learning curve and good results. It's my personal choice for my home videos.

[The village idiot]

A good DV deck and lots of tapes!Maybe one of the JVC combo SVHS/DV decks to make life easier for the transfers. You might also want a TBC like the Datavideo TBC 1000.

Or some kind of tape backup device like one that uses DAT tape, then you would need some sort of capture device like the Datavideo DAC-100, or DAC10. DAC10 would be better because it has video processor controls. Also Canopus ADVC300 because of video controls and noise reduction.

Either way will be a few dollars. The JVC decks go for around $900.00USD and the DAC-10 and ADVC300 about $600USD plus the backup drive and tapes. I would probably go with the JVC combo deck and the DV tapes. Then when you are ready, connect the combo deck to your computer with a firewire cable, and start the bigger work.

http://www.jvc.com/product.jsp?modelId=MODL026939

http://pro.jvc.com/prof/Attributes/features.jsp?tree=&model_id=MDL101333&itempath=&feature_id=01

http://pro.jvc.com/prof/Attributes/features.jsp?tree=&model_id=MDL101372&itempath=&feature_id=01

Just for some ideas, you can find better prices with a web search.

EDIT: The first link may not be a good choice, it doesn't mention a firewire connection.

[Sparkplus]

Which equipment do you have?
How many different media formats for originals?
How much money do you want to spend?
You can digitize analog video to miniDV or D8 tapes with camcorder,
maybe ask someone with time for spare to do some tasks for you.
If you want to edit better stick to DV then reencode if you wish or output to tape again.

[AlexLO]

Thanks for input. I should have been more precise. My question is:

What is the most cost effective (and easiest) way to transfer these old tapes onto some newer digital medium, with the least loss in quality, for a few years until I can begin editing all of them.

My footage consists of:
25 VHS tapes (18 years old)
32 SVHS tapes
22 8mm tapes
29 Mini DV tapes

Seems from the responses that transferring to DV tape is the best solution. Any other recommendations appreciated.

[DaBarrister]

That's a massive undertaking. Considering that 2 hours = roughly 28 gigs of uncompressed digital video at full resolution, you're talking about a lot of effort and a heck of a lot of storage all at once. In your case, you're looking at digital storage in the 3 terabyte range.

I concur that it simply isn't practical to do it all at once. Take it one step at a time, starting with the older tapes; however, you might find that your old VHS tapes are holding up better than the others. Start by doing some transfers of each and looking at the result. Then transfer the most delicate tapes first and move up to the most stable tapes.

I also agree that the best bet would be to store them onto digital video tape now and hold off on full digital transfer. My experience has shown that the older video will be more stable (less lost frames) when transferred from DV tape to computer digital thanks to the addition of rock-solid time code, but you may have a different experience.

Even after the transfer to another medium, keep the old tapes. Good luck.

[rx74me]

If you have a minidv camcorder has analog input, I would transfer it to mini-dv or passthrough to hard drive and then burn it to a dvd.
When you are old and retired, go back and edit.

I'm starting the process myself since I got the dvd burner for Christmas,
but fortunately I only have a few things on analog tape.