8mm to D8 interesting question

[coeng73]

Question:

If I play an standard 8mm tape in a Sony D8 camcorder and capture the output on a Sony MiniDV camcorder via firewire, is this the equivalent of having recorded it on the MiniDV camcorder in the first place?

I would think so. The D8 camcorder converts the analog footage into a digital format which is sent losslessly through the firewire, right?

[schematic2]

It won't be the same. 8mm is lower in resolution than DV to start with. The 8mm will be interpolated to the DV resolution.

[ofbarea]

Is this what you try to accomplish?

8mm tape -> D8 cam => firewire => mini dv cam

vs.

8mm tape -> 8mm cam => s-video => mini dv cam


If both cams are Sony, they will have symilar DV codenc enevded and the quality will depend on the D8 TBC vs, the 8mm player and mini dv recording capavilities.

Usually D8 cam, that can play 8mm tapes have good TBC.

If I have access to a high end D8 cam I would probably let the D8 to do the analog/digital conversion, but the differences should not be that great the other way around.

[coeng73]

It won't be the same. 8mm is lower in resolution than DV to start with. The 8mm will be interpolated to the DV resolution.

What about if it was in Hi8?

[ofbarea]

If I play an standard 8mm tape in a Sony D8 camcorder and capture the output on a Sony MiniDV camcorder via firewire, is this the equivalent of having recorded it on the MiniDV camcorder in the first place?

It won't be the same. 8mm is lower in resolution than DV to start with. The 8mm will be interpolated to the DV resolution.

Finally I understand what you were asking...

What about if it was in Hi8?

It is not equivalent. Even though Hi8 is better than 8mm, mini DV or D8 have more resolution.

Check the following link for different resolutions supported by most common video standard: http://www.dvcentral.org/DV-Beta.html

[edDV]

The Digital8 camcoder (if it has the 8mm playback feature) will play 8mm or Hi8 analog tapes at 1x speed. In both cases, audio will come from the linear analog tracks.*

The playback will be converted to DV format. This doesn't improve quality but is a quality capture of analog to digital. From then on the video can be handled as DV format.

* the Hi8 PCM digital audio will be ignored if present.