Capturing 8mm tapes, stick with the Video 8 or get a Dig 8?

[traxxton]

I have a bunch of 8mm tapes I need captured. Currently i have the Video 8 camera (that I taped them with) to a ATI TV Wonder, capturing in uncompressed avi then converting them to svcd with tmpeg. The quality is good actually.

I know that Digital 8 cameras can play back 8mm tapes and can be recorded on the computer through the firewire port. I havent read anything on the quality or heard any reviews on it as far as quality.

My question is; would it give better quality if I got a digital 8 camera, and brought it in through the firewire port? Or should I just stick with my current setup. My question is on the quality-will the computer capture the 8mm tapes better on a d8 then with my video 8 that I taped them from or isnt it worth $400 for a new camera. Thanks!

[Innershield]

Not all Digital8 cameras will play analog tapes. I have a trv-130 and it will not. Also not all digital cameras have analog inputs. Again, mine does not.

You are better off capturing your analog tapes to the computer for a few reasons. 1) You can capture in any format and any bitrate you want. 2) If you capture to the Digital8, then you will have to capture again to the computer. Of course there is no quality loss going from the digital8 to the computer, but it is just an extra step. 3) You have to buy a Firewire card and a cable too.

If you are going to keep filming and are looking for better picture quality then definitely get a digital camera. I have a Hi8 and Digital8 and the digital is sharper. If you just have a standard 8mm then you will see a huge improvement going digital.

[traxxton]

I allready have a minidv camera and firewire card as well as the ATI TV Wonder that I was talking about. I guss what I was really asking is since the digital 8 will have no quality loss, would it be worth getting a new camera, or isnt it all that much of a difference and just stick with the analog card?

[resnullius]

well from what i've read digital 8 cams that do support analog tapes will give you a better quality, as towether it's worth 400$ depends on how much quality you expect to save... if you already have a minidv cam i'd tell rent a digital 8 for a week end, capture as much as you can see if you think it's worth the investment. firewire cards are not expensive enough to go without (i got mine for 15$ and am very pleased with it)

[Innershield]

It is the same thing. You capture your analog tape to the digital8 tape and then to your HDD or you capture you analog tape directly to your HDD. Which ever way you do it, you are digitizing your analog tape to the hard drive. You are just adding an extra step if you capture to the d8 tape then capture again to the HDD.

When you say analog card, your capture card does not save your analog tape to your HDD in analog form. That is what a cature card does, it converts your analog to digital. You can do it with the capture card or the camera. Same thing.

[Innershield]

A digital8 cam will NOT give you better quality playback of an analog tape. It will play it the same way as a analog cam plays it. It can only output as good as its source input is.

[SingSing]

I have both 8mm and dv camcorder, both from Sharp.
The digitally transfered avi file is sharper than the analog capture one.

The new SONy analog camcorder has USB video transfer feature. With the superior sony optics and psensor. It may worth well to find out how good the image and the USB transfer are.

[Innershield]

The USB is for transfering captured still photos from the memory card not for video capture

[Innershield]

And of course your digitally captured file from your miniDVD is sharper than you analog capture. Your source going in is better.

[vhelp]

No 1, you will NOT get these figure from your 8mm transfers:
* better quality
* sharper picture

All this is hogwas!! Plain and simple. People are soooo
cought up in the DV (digital) world, and they thing that
becuase its digital, it's great quality! ...or "'you'll
get great/excellent quality" Hogwash!!

You will get only what your capture card captures the detail
of. be it DV or Analog. DV does not "improve" quality in
any way. It is only a format (digital) thats all. It's not
an enhancer agent. The higher the resolution you capture in,
the more detail you have to work with. 352x480 is a good
capture, but at 720x480, it's better, due to more detail.
If your analog capture card will allow you to cap at 720x480,
then do so. With DV, you (I) only have one option, capture
at 720x480 and in DV1 or DV2 format, all too 15gigs - no
compression option or anything else.

Stick to your analog capturing. You were doing fine from
the start. Going digital doesn't mean, going great quality.

I have 8mm tapes too, from my 8mm. And after giving my
DV cam a shot at transfering (cause I too was cought up in
the digital world of quality, bla, bla, bla) and was NOT
pleased with the results. In short, I didn't get great
quality. I got the SAME, if anything! But NOT better.
But, it didn't take me long to realise that this (above)
is just pure hogwash! GIGO, plain and simple. Applies to
digital as well.

-vhelp

[SingSing]

I have 8mm tapes too, from my 8mm. And after giving my
DV cam a shot at transfering (cause I too was cought up in
the digital world of quality, bla, bla, bla) and was NOT
pleased with the results. In short, I didn't get great
quality. I got the SAME, if anything! But NOT better.
But, it didn't take me long to realise that this (above)
is just pure hogwash!

If you do analog capture from DVcam, you should get worst because you are piciking up the pixleation noise from the DVcam.

If you transfer with firewire( it's only $30 ), you should get sharper image, and no addtional noise.

[SingSing]

The USB is for transfering captured still photos from the memory card not for video capture

The new Sony Hi-8 ( see sony web site ) just arrived in store, said they can be used as webcam for live video with USB. I wan't to know can the video be captured, and how good are they.

I am not refering to the old d8 abd dv sony camcorder.

[Innershield]

""If you do analog capture from DVcam, you should get worst because you are piciking up the pixleation noise from the DVcam.""

First of all, who would capture d8 video with an analog capture card. Anyone who has a digital cam is going to capture digitally with a firewire card.

""The new Sony Hi-8 ( see sony web site ) just arrived in store, said they can be used as webcam for live video with USB. I wan't to know can the video be captured, and how good are they.""

Have you ever used a webcam? The quality is bad. This is not the same as capturing to d8 tape and then firewire to computer. I'm sure you can capture from the USB somehow but it would be a low resolution and low bitrate. USB doesn't have enough bandwith to transfer DV which is 3.6Mbps.[/i]

[vhelp]

oh, i forgot the noise thing to ad to my list, but it's not a lot
if at all.

As far as what was stated about analog caping from a DVcam,
no, i don't do that. I was saying that after I capture form
my Satalete via Goldplated Moster cable and S-video to miniDV
tape, I then (when I'm ready) transfer it via firewire.
Quality IS great, and the DVavi file wil play via powerDVD and
winDVD 3.0 quite well, though powerDVD show the interlace, while
winDVD 3.0 does not. Yes, DV is interlated still, at least on
MINE!! I've heared of "progressive" DV's, but it really doesn't
matter to me at this time. Do I like watching via poerdvd or
windvd?? dah, no! I just want to make sure everything looks
ok after transfered to my hd. sometimes, the transfer may
show a strate pixel-block or something, probably due to the
miniDV tape I just recorded to, but thats only occational, and
like analog catpuring, it no worse then its counterpart,
"frame drops". I dont' know if this pixel-block thing relates
a direct passthrough capture via firewire, as it does with miniDV
tapes, but I wont know for myself as I don't think I have that
ability I once thought I did have.
I like the DV cam. So, don't get me wrong. I'm having a ball
with it, with my Satalete captures and all, but there are issues
in the final DV avi file.

-vhelp

[SkinnyDog]

Capturing from an analog source to an analog capture card or to mini dv camcorder has come up on a lot of posts, but I've yet to see anything like a definative answer of which is better?

First, assume an analog capture card that can capture at 720 x 480 using a lossless codec like Huffy. this as I understand it is going to get you a very good capture.

Second, doing the analog capture with the minidv camcorder and then transferring later via firewire. As i understand it the minidv will automatically capture at 720x 480.

I don't care how big the avi file is. I'd rather capture at the best quality and then do the compression to mpeg2 after the capture.

I know no capture method will improve on the original source but which method will come closest to the original or are they so close it really doesn't make a difference?

VHelp wrote:

All this is hogwas!! Plain and simple. People are soooo
cought up in the DV (digital) world, and they thing that
becuase its digital, it's great quality! ...or "'you'll
get great/excellent quality" Hogwash!!

Aren't people talking about great/excellent quality using a minidv for the capture because the result is very close to the original source and not because it somehow became magically better??

[vhelp]

SkinnyDog,

I'm not saying that it's not great quality. I'm saying that people
seem to believe that if they get a DV cam, they can get better
output quality from there VHS or 8mm tapes. Its like you get the
feeling that it's gonna make it better quality. Its not.
Its' gonna capture at 720x480 and w/out any frame-drops (there's
your quality) You can get the same quality 720x480 w/ an analog
capture card, but w/out the "color space" screw up assocated with
the DV cam's transfer method. The "color space" I'm talking about
is the one where the colors look washed out. Red's are reader
and green are greener, etc. I've tried many variations to fix
this, but there is none so far. This is producing the same results
that my DC10+ card did, but a little lessor. So, its not that bad.
But, the fact staill remains. It wont improve on your quality.
It will digitally save to tape (unless you do direct passthrough)
to your harddrive. In my experience, my DV cam 720x480 of my 8mm tapes
(will have to try VHS real soon) was the same as my analog captures,
but my analog caps colors were rich and the same as my source colors.
But, on my DV cam capture's (720x480) of my 8mm tapes were, though
the quality was/is very good, the colors are washed out. Sure you
can tweak them a little w/ a few color filters, but they still don't
match the origonal sources, and they ad to encoding time.

Making DV caps of your 8mm or VHS 4that matter will digitally save
your 8mm/vhs to miniDV in the quality your source (8mm/vhs) was in
last, and no matter how many times you go back to the miniDV tape,
you will always have the same quality - no loss. That is the benefit
of DV (digital) . When I cap from satalete, DV is NOT making my caps
better or improving its quality. It is only digitally storing them.
I transfer them via firewire at 720x480 getting as much detail from
the source, miniDV tape, onto my harddrive. Then, it's up to me to
make the best of my DV avi files final output via VCD or SVCD.

That's what i mean by not getting better quality from DV. DV is just
a storage/codec storage format. Not a capture enhancer.

If your footage is garbage, and your record to DV or use the passthrough,
you'll end up with a digitally stored footage of your garbage
. . .GIGO.

Sorry I can't put this all in better words, writing is not one of my
strong points.
That's what I ment, SkinnyDog.

-vhelp

[SkinnyDog]

VHELP, thanks that clears it up a lot, at least for me. I hadn't heard about the color washout, however. I assume it's at the capture phase and you can see it when you play back a minidv tape and not the firewire transfer phase as that should transfer exactly what you have on the tape. Has anyone explained to you why this is happening?

What method are you using for analog capture -- card and program??

Skinnydog.

[vhelp]

sorry Skinnydog,

I was out doing some wash (still doing some)

No, I didn't hear anything else form anyone else.

>> What method are you using for analog capture -- card and program??
I'm not sure what excatly are you talkng about here.
Analog?? I'm basically just taping to a 60min. miniDV tape!
* Directv -> to DV cam (via Goldplated Moster cables w/ S-Video) onto
miniDV tape.
No analog capture card here. As far as I can tell, I can't do a direct
passthrough capture w/ my DV cam. when I go through the normal route
of caping from sat, if I leave the "DV in" firewire cord plugged into
my DV cam, and I press record on my DV cam, I get no video. But, while
I'm still waiting for the video to show, if I quickly unplug the DV
wire from the DV cam, the video shows (and of course, records)
So, I'm assuming that I can't capture direct. Shame. I'd really like
to test weather or not the "color wash" issiue is due to the miniDV
tape or else the DV cam itself. But, I believe the Singsing can confirm
this for me. I think he had addressed the "color wash" issue as well.
But, I'm not sure if he/she did it/get it via passthrough or not.

I wanted to do some testing of caping from my Apex ad-1500, but the DV
cam is equipted with macrovision cercuitry and when sensed, it picks up
on the dvd and vhs macrovisoin signal and just shuts down the cam, he he..
I heard of the models of ad-1500 that can disable it, but the model I
have is not the matching s/r no. I took a look at k-mart's $99 ad-1500
and it s/n starts with an "D". I think this is the newer one, and that
will pass the macrovision cleaner test. But, i'm not sure. If it is,
i'll give my current ad-1500 to a friend who needs one badly, and i'll
buy the newer model today, after wash finishes its rinse cycle.
Is this the model to pass "D" ...anyone?

hay SkinnyDog, what cam do you have, etc.???
Thanks 4da support.

-vhelp

[resnullius]

well i<ve had a similar color wash problem with my dv cam, on my computer monitor. when export it back to analog i fing the colors are the same as they were on my cam...

[vhelp]

>> well i<ve had a similar color wash problem with my dv cam, on my
>> computer monitor. when export it back to analog i fing the colors are
>> the same as they were on my cam...

so, in other words, you're saying that you still get them washed out?

I finally got my ad-1500 to work w/out macrovision, and can NOW cap
from my ad-1500 to my DV cam. So, I did a capture of one of my
favorate movie's, "Dogma" since it's in great quality, and not too
many moving parts. Did a scene in the restoraurant and on the train.
Easy scenes here. anyways, I did some test encodes to SVCD and,
quality of SVCD is smooth, but the color was horrid!! It was on the "brown" side!!. Really bad.
Yep!! There's definately a "color space" convergence going on here. I
think it's the DV's "driver codec" that's doing the convergence here, but
I could be wrong. Right now, there is not one person in knowedgeable
here on this forum that can explain it, AND give resolution/answer
to it. Would love to solve it. I think it's just a matter of figuring out how
to re-map the "color space" using filters in VD or TMPG, but TMPG doesn't
seem to be able to supply enough color filters for the job, nor VD. I think
that there must be a seporate, special "color space" converagence filter
for TMPG and/or VD to handle/fix this for us DV cam users.

I will play around with the two test DV avi files I just did, for a little while
longer. If I find anything worth posting, I'll reply here or most likely at
my thread I started <<HERE>>

-vhelp

[Bstansbury]

Vhelp,

You mentioned in your last post that you found a way to get around the macrovision on your Apex 1500. I have one and would like to know how you did it. So far I have not had a problem ripping DVD's since I have a second DVD player installed in my system and it seems to be able to bypass macrovision. I was alble to rip "Peral Harbor" --both disk and I know that has got to be mac-locked.

[SingSing]

First of all, who would capture d8 video with an analog capture card. Anyone who has a digital cam is going to capture digitally with a firewire card.

The problem with NTSC DVcam are they only put out AVI file. The size of AVI file generated are not able to hold a movie length video.

Good point about the USB transfer, Sony spec video web cam most likely that it is in web cam resolution and low bit rate.

I still think analog Hi-8 give better quality than DVcam. This is like a good new vinyl record is always better than the CDROm with the same material.

[Tommy]

I have both a HI-8 and a Mini DV. The mini DV is better.

Now getting back to the orginal question. If its between using the ATI Tv wonder and the Camcorder, I would go with the Camcorder. I have an ATI AIW 128 and the camcorder does a better job.

[resnullius]

no actually vhelp i meant that the colors looked fine once exported from my comp to a tv. if your color are washed out when in the cam it's the cam (usually a cheap lens or recording heads) thats the prob.

[Truebrit]

*****quote*****
A digital8 cam will NOT give you better quality playback of an analog tape. It will play it the same way as a analog cam plays it. It can only output as good as its source input is.


Innershield - respect

you are seriously mis informed regarding your understanding/appreciation of your above statement which i suggest is through your lack of using this equipment capable of performing this operation

playing old 8mm tapes through a digital8 (except trv130 - cos the dont allow this) via firewire will certainly give better end result comparable quality than through an analog corder/card for various technical reasons including much higher quality internal drum mechanism on d8 equipment and various tbc improvements due to buffering, not to mention the highly efficient onboard dv codec to mpeg or whatever choice, that is of a higher quality than 8mm to mjpeg to avi to mpeg or whatever. most other d8 cams vith s-out terminal can be widgeted for about £60 english to allow the dv/s terms to become ins and outs

http://www.datavision.co.uk/widgetlist.htm#digi8 - for compatability

vhelp

******quote*****

No 1, you will NOT get these figure from your 8mm transfers:
* better quality
* sharper picture

yet again i disagree with your statement too

granted the quality will not be better than the source original, but the process as a whole- the quality of old 8mm via digital 8 is the best quality option

as to whether its worth the extra expense of buying yet another camcorder when you already have mini dv - well thats your decision
personally id sell both yours and buy a high end digi8 unit

[Innershield]

Truebrit, Are you suggesting that playing an analog tape in a digital cam will enhance the performance of the tape? Let's say that I record one of my cassette tapes to a cd, is it going to sound better? I think not.

BTW I have used the equipment. If I failed to mention it, let me mention it now. I have a trv68 Hi8, a trv130 D8, and a trv230 D8 which I specifically bought because of the backwards compatability and A/V ins.

[tinycorkscrew]

>>Truebrit, Are you suggesting that playing an analog tape in a digital cam >>will enhance the performance of the tape? Let's say that I record one of >>my cassette tapes to a cd, is it going to sound better? I think not.

I don't think that's what truebrit is saying, and I don't think your analogy accurately represents his argument. If you record a cassette tape to CD, of course the sound won't improve, but if you get a high-end cassette player, the higher-quality playback hardware might improve the sound, if only neglibly. The first rule of conversion is that a conversion will never improve upon the quality of the source, but I'm not talking about conversion when I tell you that my old 8mm tapes look better when played back from my TRV120 than they do when I play them back in my old Sony 8mm camcorder.

I don't want to misrepresent his position, but it seems that his essential argument is that an 8mm tape captured via firewire on a Digital8 camcorder will give better results than using an analog camcorder and an analog capture card. The camcorder does a hardware analog-digital conversion, and it will probably do a better job than using a computer to do the same type of A/D conversion on the fly.

[vhelp]

tinycorkscrew, and trubrit, ect.,

Let me correct myself (at least, to an extent)

I think I understand now. And, I think I can actually
believe you now too, cause what tinycorkscrw said above
makes a lot of sense to me, now that I've had the chance
to really think about it.

yes, say you have a cassette player (made in tiwain) and
it plays T7** grade tape (standard tape grade)**
and user is able to tape from CD audio to this cassette
tape T7 grade, and music is fine.
On the flip side, this same user hears of a really good
brand/make from Sony and goes out and buys it and
plays his same T7 grade tape in this new Sony player,
this new user may or may not here slightly better quality
out of his new Sony. It will depend on a number of factors
such as tape hiss or noise, moto, etc. The new Sony player
may give slightly better quality sound, OR may end up
"amplifying" the baddly regarded T7 grade tape, making the
quality of audio sound worse, OR just play that T7 grade
tape the same quality. But the user could probably end up
getting better quality "Recorded" sound from the new Sony,
should the user "record" to the new Sony onthe T7 grade
tape.

So, based on the above, and in theory, this could be true,
and I stand corrected on some issues. Since I don't have
didital 8 camera, I can't test this out for myself. But
to be fair, I'll at least split half way on this issue

-vhelp

[Innershield]

what i am saying is if you play your Hi8 tape (that was recorded in a hi-end Hi8 cam) in an old taiwan junk cam, of course it is going to look bad. But if you play that same tape in the hi-end Hi8 that it was recorded on and in a D8 it is going to look the same. The D8 might have better heads etc. but it can only pick up what the Hi8 put there on the tape in the first place. It is not going to add quality to the original

[vhelp]

Innershield,

I'm saying that (based on my prev. analigy post) it will (might) play it
better then the Taiwan brand, but NOT give it, or improve it's quality.
It will just play it better maybe, giving you the illusion of better quality.

DV's not gonna turn your home-made videos into a Hollywood or Studio
type quality. It'll only be digitizing your VHS or 8mm, etc tapes. But
instead of reusing your VHS or 8mm tapes over and over again, wairing
out these mediums, and getting worse, after worse dubbs of each. . .,
you could just pop in your recorded miniDV tape and replay it again,
and again with the same quality of your "last" dub from VHS or 8mm
media.. . . . never getting enhanced or added quality. The quality is
having something that's ben digitized and using that digitized source
to work with over and over as much as you like, but always having that
digitized source to work with.

That about raps it up for me.
-vhelp