DVD, media and camcorder questions

[phinphan]

I am planning to replace my 8mm camcorder with a digital. My ultimate goal is to be able to record birthdays, christmas etc etc and then dump that to a dvd. I would like to be able to title chapters, not really editing. I may want some editing down the roadbut not now. I may want to make a copy or partial copies for family.

I plan on buying a dvd recorder (with firewire) so I can take all my 8mm and put them on dvd (I think I can use my old camcorder for this).

My questions are do I want a hard drive camera, miniDV, digital8?

Do I need to worry about format (MPG3 etc), I guess Im not very familiar with all the formats so if anyone can help me that would be great.

Do you have recommendations of equipment?
I was looking at the liteon (5005 or 5001) dvd recorder. Maybe a cannon camcorder, I am a little soured with Sony, my last camcorder was very expensive and very disapointing.

Thanks in advance for advice.

Cody

[Paul William]

If you want to add titles to your home movies, you need to get the movies onto your computer, and then use an editing program. Copying them directly to a disc using a standalone DVD recorder won't give you titleing capability (at least not on the Liteon machines. others may, since new products and features do come along) To record a disc on your computer, you will need a DVD burner installed. Liteon has some good models of those. If you didn't want to do titleing, the Liteon 5005 would work to record DVDs from your old 8mm camcorder, assuming your camcorder can still play.

Given that you want to title your old movies, I think you have two choices in upgrading to a digital camcorder.

1) Buy a Sony Digital8 camcorder that is backwardly compatible with 8mm. Connect it to your computer with a firewire cable. Play your old 8mm tapes in the Digital8 camcorder capturing them onto the computer. Do edits/titleing using some editing software.

I use pinnacle studio 9 ($99) with good success for such work, however, it will occationally crash! When it does, however, I am able to start it right up again with no loss to my project, because it autosaves frequently, so it doesn't bum me out too much. It is a windows machine, afterall, and they are supposed to crash, right?)

Make sure you read the fine print on the specification sheet for the Digital8 camcorder you buy, as, despite how Sony has deliberately positioned the camera to appeal to people who need backward compatibility with their old 8mm products, not all of their models are! (The cheapest of their Digital8 cameras, for example, is NOT backwardly compatible with 8mm analog tapes! I know this because I deliberately bought their cheapest Digital-8 camera so I could tranfer my old 8mm tapes, and it was incompatible (Sony sucks!) Now I have a $300 paperweight.

Problems with the strategy of using a Digital8 camcorder to transfer analog tapes include: Digital8 camcorders are an evolutionary (inteligent design?) dead end. Before you know it, you will need help transfering your Digital8 tapes into your computer when your Dig8 camcorder dies, and if you don't stay current and transfer your tapes to DVD via the computer, you will find yourself needing to buy another Digital8 camcorder before you know it. Also, hiccups in the analog tapes (caused if you have tape gaps on your analog tapes, can cause the Digital8 to do funny things to the converted digital audio stream, which can render your captured video unplayable. For these reasons, I think a better strategy is:

2) Get an better (non-Sony) MiniDV format (my current favorite) camcorder for recording new movies and transfering new movies to the computer via firewire. Get an analog capture card for your computer, or USB 2 analog capture device which you will use to connect your old analog camcorder to your computer. Press play on the camcorder, and press record on the computer, and convert your old tapes to digital.

I think this is better because you avoid the evolutionary dead end of Digital8 and you get to avoid digital hiccups causing your captured video to be unplayable. This is a good strategy if your 8mm camcorder still plays fine.

You will have more creative fun as you progress from titles to editing than you would using a standalone Liteon 5005 recorder.

- Paul

[phinphan]

I kinda want to avoid using my computer for this at all, I am willing to sacrifice titles to just dump the video to disks. I really dont have the time or desire to a lot of work to do this.

Can I use my old camera with rca outs into the DVD recorder to capture the old tapes?

Thanks for your reply I am leaning towards the MiniDV but I was wondering if the Harddrive might be even better as I wont need to buy media at all (exept the dvds)

Cody

[edDV]

I kinda want to avoid using my computer for this at all, I am willing to sacrifice titles to just dump the video to disks. I really dont have the time or desire to a lot of work to do this.

Can I use my old camera with rca outs into the DVD recorder to capture the old tapes?

Thanks for your reply I am leaning towards the MiniDV but I was wondering if the Harddrive might be even better as I wont need to buy media at all (exept the dvds)

Cody

If you get a MiniDV camcorder with the "analog pass through" feature then you are covered both ways.

You can connect your existing 8mm camcorder to the MiniDV camcorder and play directly to firewire for transfer to a computer or to a DVD recorder with IEEE-1394 inputs. This covers any future need for computer transfer.

Or, you can connect your existing 8mm camcorder to the analog inputs on the DVD recorder and record directly.

If you don't have a working 8mm camcorder, you could buy the midrange Digital8 that plays 8mm and Hi8 in addition to DV digital. Digital8 and MiniDV record the same quality DV video but use different tape cartridges.

[W_Eagle]

Excluding the use of your PC is very much limiting to what you will be able to do (basic editing, chartering, titling). Without the use of you PC, basically what you will be able to do is transfer your Camcorder shots into a DVD, as they are.

Yes, you can transfer your old Camcorder tapes into DVD recorder, PC and another Camcorder through the analog inputs of the receiving device (usually RCA for video and either RCA or mini plug for audio).

Camcorders that record into HD do so with MPEG2 format -- lower quality and limited editing capability than DV, or MiniDV. Another point -- Hard disks crash from time to time. In such a case you may loose many hours of filming. MiniDV tapes are much more durable.

Your basic choice is between ease of use (without going through the PC) and amount of control and implementing creativity. For sure, dealing with digital video on PC has a long learning curve -- for most people, at least few months. Yet, once one have learned it, the reward (in satisfaction) is great. Your second choice is of quality. Your old 8mm tapes will probably not look very good on TV (either by itself, or transferred to DVD). Best quality consumer Camcorders are the MiniDV ones.

For transferring your old 8mm to another media (PC, DVD recorder, digital Camcorder) Sony Camcorders has an advantage over all other makes -- the function of "pass-through", which stabilizes analogue video tapes. So, in your case, Sony digital camcorder would be probably the best choice (I use Panasonic Camcorder myself, as I don't bother with any analogue video tapes).