DV Avi really the best solution for Video8/Hi8? No HD?

[jouse.]

Hey guys,

I have focused on restoration and digitalization for years now, and the last months i spent capturing my whole Video8 and Hi8 Collection to my hard disc, using a Sony DCR-TRV325E, connected via Firewire to my notebook and capturing with Adobe Premiere Elements 6.0.

Everything went fine, the quality is amazing. I was just curious, if there is even a better way, regarding picture quality, to gain even more resoulution or picture quality. I know that those analog tapes do not have High Definition resolution and that even DV AVI is enough for them, but would HD-Capturing not gain even a little bit in quality? o.O Maybe the limitation of 720x576 is a bit to low...

Have you tried it? What do you think?

[aedipuss]

you can't capture what isn't there. DVavi is already higher def than what is on any of your tapes. the only other way to capture would be to hook up the composite out to an a/d converter which would be lower quality

[Cornucopia]

The only area where DV could even be considered to be deficient would be in the color subsampling (4:1:1 or 4:2:0, depending upon whether you are NTSC or PAL). And that "deficiency" really only pertains to editing/processing/compositing tasks. As an end-user medium, DV is more than capable of supplying ALL that the (average) human eye can perceive - for SD.

And Video8, Hi8 and D8 are all SD. So that's pretty much it. If you want to get finnicky about it, you could connect via S-Video or Component to a S-Video/Component capture card and cap as Lossless 4:2:2 or Lossless 4:4:4 at SD rez, but that's the best that could be obtained from those formats.

Analog supposedly and theoretically has "infinite" resolution. But that isn't really true in practice. After a certain point, resolvability slopes away into infinitesimally smaller increments. You can see this objectively by looking at a "Modulation Transfer Function" of a test chart.
Plus, that "infinite" spec could really only be true in the horizontal dimension. Vertically, there are SCANNING LINES of resolution and they are FIXED (at 525/480 for NTSC or 625/576 for PAL).

So, after all that long-winded speech, I'd just simply say "don't sweat it, you've done well enough".

Scott

[jouse.]

Alright, thank you guys! I see what you mean, and I've also thought about that and it's silliness...

But I've experienced good things when it comes to a gain of resolution when doing so with VHS, connected via S-VHS (Recorder and Cable) and captured in HD. You can see that example here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FWHmk-9hvU

But due to I've captured digital with firewire, this does not make sense here :/

[yoda313]

But due to I've captured digital with firewire, this does not make sense here :/

They probably just missed that in their post. If its captured via firewire you are done. No need to do anything else.

If you did not have a firewire transfer available than using svideo would be your best alternative after that. Thats all they were getting at.