Capturing/converting Hi8 home movies

[AlanCake]

Hi

What's the best thing to do with my old Hi home movies. Is there an easy way to convert them into MPEG format. Could I send them off to be converted professionally. Any idea of the cost?

Or should I bite the bullet and try doing it myself. I've got a Voodoo 3500 card which has audio/video inputs?

And what kind of quality should I expect?

Kind regards

Alan

[jtor]

I don't know the details about your voodoo card.

Anyway, you have 2 options; going for the 'straight MPEG' gadgets (Dazzle DVC/DVC II), or ordinary capture cards. Difference is, in ordinary capture cards, you capture in AVI, and do another processing step, which is to encode the AVI to MPEG.

My understanding is, there are also capture cards capable of capturing in MPEG, but is more demanding as far as processing power is concerned.

Check the Capture Cards link on the left for additional info/features of the cards available in the market.

hope this helps.

[thxkid]

Keep i mind if you get a Dazzleor Happuage MPEG1/2 capture card, you don't want to edit once its converted to MPEG, if just want to convert striaght shots no editing then your best bet would be one of these cards, they take a lot less CPU power than lets say a All in Wonder card.
If you need to edit then you will need to capture to AVI and this will be much more time consuming also, must capture to AVI, edit to AVI, encode finished AVI to MPEG using another program like TMPGE to get it as a VCD or SVCD.
I have been doing this for over 2 years now and it took me some time before I found out the perfect setup to get the finished product where it now looks perfect, its trial and error.

[shaady]

Alternatively, you can capture from a Sony Digital8 camcorder using the IEEE 1394/Firewire/i.Link connection. The camcorder automatically converts analog recordings on 8mm & Hi8 to digital before sending it to your PC via IEEE 1394. Edit the AVI(if you want to), then encode to MPEG.

[buzzinhornets]

I have an ati rage fury pro 32mb vid-in vid-out and I've tried converting video from my SONY Hi8 cam to my comp. and the quality was fine... just it took a super large harddrive for anything over 20min of footage... but try it yourself... it's kinda fun.

[Tommy]

if you use a svhs into the computer from the hi8 it will probably look fine. I would capture to avi then edit, then convert to mpeg. Yes you can use a camcorder to convert the analog streams to digital and use the firewire to transfer to the computer, that also works great. However the camcorder will probably be more expensive than the capture card.

I use both methods, with the camcorder way is use a sony pc9 and with the capture card I use a ATI AIW 128. However if my intent is to just go straight to mpg i'll use the capture card because i'm not using windows 2k or xp and would only be able to capture about 20 min in dv. Also alot of times when doing realtime mpeg a lot has to do with the power of your box so you don't drop frames...etc...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Tommy on 2001-09-28 11:42:07 ]</font>