Hi-8 Capture: standalone recorder or PC with capture card ?

[nalooti]

Hi,

I have many Hi-8 analog cassettes to convert but didn't find the perfect DVD recorder yet. So while waiting i wonder if it's worth to buy a capture device (e.g. Plextor ConvertX PX-M402U).

Converting cassettes to mpeg2 is straightforward with standalone dvd recorders. I'd then compress them to Divx in my PC.

However if there are serious valid arguments to do it by capture cards/devices (a hardware card plus vdub for example), i'll be glad to know them. My criteria are
1/ quality and then
2/ ease of operations
3/ speed

Has anyone compared a capture by a standalone dvd recorder and a capture by PC via card+vdub for example ?

many thanks

[guns1inger]

It depends on what you want to do with the footage. If you just want to get it onto disc to preserve it and make it easier to view, a DVD Recorder is easily the best solution.

If, however, you need to process or edit the data in more than just a rudimentary way, then capturing to the PC using a suitable codec is a much better option.

Mpeg2 is a final delivery codec. The nature of temporal encoding, the fact that it is lossy (and deceptively so), and the fact that repeated encoding very quickly degrades the image quality (as little as two encodes can noticably degrade mpeg2 footage, compared to 5 - 10 encode with DV, and an infinite number with a lossless codec), means that footage recorded via DVD Recorder is limited in it's future application.

[LloydAZ]

If you capture them on a DVD recorder, then convert it to Xvid afterwards, you will get quality loss (converting it twice, once to MPG-2, then again to Xvid.)

If you get a capture card, and use a lossless codec to capture the video with, you will not suffer that much of a quality loss when you convert it to Xvid.

[thecoalman]

There is other options, one may be sitting right under your nose. If you have a digital video cam most allow for pass-thru.

[SingSing]

There is other options, one may be sitting right under your nose. If you have a digital video cam most allow for pass-thru.

Pass thru is a great solution.

[yoda313]

Well if the user has hi-8 tapes to convert then it is likely the user doesn't have a digital camcorder yet.

Though the user may have recently upgraded and is trying to convert the last of their analog collection.

Or borrowing from a friend is always an option.

But I agree with the above statements:

1 - dvd recorder is great for ease of use to go straight to disc with no editing.

2 - pc capture allows for most flexibility in capturing and codec use.

3 - I have no experience with pass through capturing so I can't make an informed judgement on that option.

[nalooti]

Hi all and thanks so much for your reply.

2 things:

1/ What is pass-thru ?

i may not have a digicam but sure i'll buy one in the future -probably when there are few models with flash memory only option ,no dvd (poor quality), no DV cassettes (mechanical and too big). However if flash models are too late to come cheap, and if "pass-thru" is a good option (quality or speed ???), then i can consider buying a digicam now instead.

2/ In all your replies, you never talk about quality (which one is better ?), you talk about ease of use and editing. Quality is a must for me. Editing is not so much an issue.

I'll probably have two copies of these digitized family videos for the peace of mind. One would be in Divx (avi), the other could be mpeg2 or Divx. And i agree that i should not reencode because of loss, so i have to encode the original twice: one in Divx and one in mpeg2 (i wonder the benefits of mpeg2 anyway and if it's worth- any suggestion?). In this case the standalone recorder is not an option because they can't encode in Divx so i have to reencode. So the preferred solution for now would be PC capture card. But again if you can confirm that the QUALITY would be identical or better than the standalone dvd recorder.

many thanks

[SingSing]

Better digital camcorders can be used to transfer/copy analog audio/video signal like VCR or Hi-8/mm to PC as digital signal, like miniDV.

You put a live analog signal into digital camcorder audio/video input (aka av pass thru), and start the tranfer to PC. The camcorder will start to digitised the VCR type signal, and send it to the PC as digital AV signal.

[stantheman1976]

I don't understand why you don't like DV. MiniDV tapes are extremely small and take up hardly any space and will probably last longer than you. Plus they store information digitally and give extremely good quality. MiniDV cams are very affordable. You can get something like the Panasonic PV-gs180 for around $400 and get an excellent picture.

Pass thru means you take an analog source (like Hi-8 or VHS), plug it into a device that transfers by firewire (like most MiniDV cams), and use your pc to "capture" the footage to uncompressed DV-AVI. This method will give the best results if you have a fiewwire card and a device to use for pass thru. This way the footage is stored in 25Mbps DV-AVI instead of MPEG-2 which has to be squeezed down to around 8000-9000 to fit on a DVD. If you use pass thru and a good software MPEG-2 encoder like TMPGEnc or Canopus then 99% of people who see the video will not notice any difference between the original and the compressed.

MPEG-2 vs. Divx/Xvid:

MPEG-2 is for producing DVD to view on TV. If you want to share any of what you're doing it's best to go that route.

Divx/Xvid is mainly for viewing on a PC. If you don't plan to watch any of these on TV you can go that route. In that case get a good DVD recorder and record in the 1 hour setting. Then rip that to Divx/Xvid with multipass encoding and high enough bitrate. It will most likely suffice.
You can keep the original to watch on TV and store and use your Divx/Xvid rip for viewing on PC.

If you go the pass thru route you can still encode to Divx/Xvid if you want also.

Hope this helps.

[nalooti]

Hi,

I understand that pass-thru is just to digitize an analog signal without compression (and you suggested doing pass-thru with a digicam).

I don't understand why to buy a digicam to do that. Most of PC capture card should have the option to digitize without compression. Once digitized, i could use many freewares (TMPGEnc, vdub) to convert it to mpeg2 or Divx respectively.

So i don't see the point why to buy a digicam.
However i recognize that digitizing without compression may be better for quality even if it takes more time and even if i don't plan to edit. The reason is because with my conversion freeware, i may have much more control over bitrates and other options than with a standalone recorder or a PC capture card with integrated compression. So again it depends on the quality difference!

I understand that a good comparison between standalone recorder and PC capture is not possible because of so many factors involved but based on what you've seen with regular brands, what method of capture is better regarding quality, assuming a PC card with on-board compression (i plan to buy the Plextor ConvertX PX-M402U which is a USB2 conversion to Divx or mpeg2 on which on-board compression can't be deactivated)

thanks

[guns1inger]

. . . . Pass thru means you take an analog source (like Hi-8 or VHS), plug it into a device that transfers by firewire (like most MiniDV cams), and use your pc to "capture" the footage to uncompressed DV-AVI. . . .

DV is not uncompressed. It is, in fact, fairly heavily compressed, at around 5:1. There are cards that will capture uncompressed, however you need fast HDDs with lost of space as the data requirements for storage and bandwidth are very high.

[SingSing]

DV is compressed at 5;1, compare to 25:1 for DVD mpeg2. Human eyes are not that sharp, 5:1 compression is really hard to tell against uncompressed. We can't even see the TV screen and light bulbs are flickering at 50/60 cycle per second.

Paint manufacturers ran a test on human ability to tell color apart, and they find out of the 200 plus color. We can only tell about 112 colors apart.

[guns1inger]

It depends on what you are doing with it as to how obvious it is. Try blue or green screen keying with standard DV and you will quickly see how the compression affects it. Yes, it is generally visually impercetible, and so is a good quality mpeg2 encoding. I never said otherwise. However it is foolish to believe that it is uncompressed, or to work with it on that assumption.

[SingSing]

The perception that DV is uncompressed, comes from its frequent association with "lossless compression". Which implied that with the right uncompression, the DV can be expanded to its uncompressed form.

The important catch of encoding from a compressed source, is that it will have additional aliasing, on top of the normal artifact, vs encoding from an uncompressed source. In fact most of the AVI format are compressed, I can't recall one that is uncompressed. Is there a MBMP format out there ?

[thecoalman]

So i don't see the point why to buy a digicam.

It's just a suggestion and it fits your first two needs, only reason it doesn't fit your third one is because it has to be converted. They do make standalone DV converters like the ADVC-110 (check the ratings, it's the highest on this forum and probably has the most overall votes as well).

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=349146&...ughType=search

Or the ADS which is supposed to be good too:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=389754&...ughType=search