Capturing NTSC Analogue Hi-8 tapes

[redjade]

I'm having trouble capturing some footages from our Hi-8 tapes with NTSC signals. I've already tried a series of capture cards and buses to capture the footages, but I still get either no sound, with black and white frames, or with sounds, and a black and white frames. Some of them even hang in the middle of my capture. I am stuck, coz I have also upgraded my motherboard as well, and my hard drive too.

My comp specifications:
Motherboard: ASUS P4V533-MX
HD: Maxtor 6Y080L0, 80 GB, partitioned to 20 GB on C: and 60 GB on D:
512 MB RAM
Intel P4 2.4 Ghz
OS: WinXP Pro

Here are the list of capture cards/buses that I've tried, and failed.
- Swann DVD Easy Analog: apparently has NTSC as the default capture signal
- Belkin Hi-Speed USB 2.0 DVD Creator
- Belkin USB VideoBus II

I also tried capturing through my IEEE 1394 Firewire DV Capture Card. All I got were sounds but with black and white frames. I've messed around with the settings, but there were still no changes, or it makes the frames worst. If any of you guys can give me advice as to why it doesn't seem to want to work, or any suggestions on what I should do, it'd be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[redjade]

By the way, I'm from New Zealand so our signal's PAL.

[FulciLives]

NTSC format video tapes (be it Hi8 or any other format such as VHS) need to be played back on a NTSC capable device. In other words you cannot play them back correctly (and therefore cannot capture them) using a PAL only Hi8 device.

Could this be the problem here? Sounds like it but I can't say for sure as you didn't give any info on how you are playing these NTSC Hi8 tapes.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
You must capture NTSC as NTSC so even if you are playing the NTSC Hi8 tapes correctly you would be getting problems if you had your capture card/device set to record PAL instead of NTSC.

[redjade]

I have a DV CAM with NTSC playback, if that's what you mean. That's where I try and capture the NTSC footages.

[FulciLives]

I have a DV CAM with NTSC playback, if that's what you mean. That's where I try and capture the NTSC footages.

Well a DV CAM can't play back a Hi8 tape unless you mean to say you have a Digital8 CAM which of course is not the same as DV aka miniDV

So are you using a Digital8 cam? If so most Digital8 cams can play back Hi8 and convert it to Digital Video/Audio and output it through the FIREWIRE port (aka IEEE 1394 or as SONY calls it i.link).

If you have such a Digital8 CAM then the best thing would be to connect it to the computer using the FIREWIRE port and transfer it to the computer as DV AVI using a program such as DVIO (which is freeware).

You can then use a program such as TMPGEnc or CINEMA CRAFT ENCODER (aka CCE SP or CCE BASIC) to convert the DV AVI to MPEG-2 DVD format.

Please note that not all Digital8 cams will convert a Hi8 tape to Digital Video/Audio for FIREWIRE transfer but my understand is that most models DO do this.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman