capturing hi8 tapes

[drakefamily2]

I'm a newbie and am interested in getting a capture card or box to convert a bunch of hi8 analog tapes from my camcorder. Am on a limited budget so what is the best buy for your money. Most of my tapes are 2 hour tapes, how much hard drive am i going to need to store a tape before i send to dvd. Thanks for all the advice you can give.

[bbeiler]

As I'm reading your post I'm capturing Hi-8 as I type. I've been through the gountlet and back and I have truely found a solution that I am very happy with. I bought a Sapphire theater pro 550 which has a hardware encoder built in (Mpeg-2). I wanted my end result to be mpeg-2 because that is the DVD format, so burning to DVD is very simple once all my video is digitized. I've actually been doing it for years but I got a new computer so I bought the new capture card.

The card came with many complications but I believe I now have the solution. Software for the card is very limited. No software came with the card that allowed for capturing from s-video. I tried many programs and found out that christv and dvd moviefactory 2.0 worked the best.

Here is a post that I was writing in that might give more information

https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=289265&highlight=best+mpeg2+encoder


I capture at the highest bitrate DVDMF 2.0 will allow. CBR 8000. Audio is at 384 k (I can't adjust audio at all). It takes about 70MB per minute. A 2-hour tape is about The quality is identical to the original and I can capture on the fly to mpeg-2 (no need to transcode). I'm basically archiving the video for viewing or quickly burning to a dvd. I have plenty of space so that is not a concern. Also, the best part about a hardware encoder is that I can do other things on my computer and not worry about dropping frames. The down side is that is won't let me SEE what I'm capturing on the computer so I have to leave the camcorder window open so I know when to click stop.


Also, with the theater pro, you get a killer tuner.

Brent

[drakefamily2]

Where did you get the card and how much did it cost?

[amango]

2 hours of digital video in dv-avi format will be 26 gigabytes in your hard drive. That will be the best format if you want to edit the video and then compress it to mpeg (about 9 gigabytes eventually), if don't, you can compress it directly with a card with hardware encoder built-in as bbeiler do. So you can do with a standalone dvd-recorder.

If you choose the first way, the best option is to connect your Hi8 camcorder via RCA or S-video to a digital camcorder with analog input and digital camcorder to PC via firewire: the digicam will convert the analog signal to digital (dv-avi) on the fly, with very good results

[bbeiler]

I bought the card here

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=320832&affiliate=pricewatch

Please beware. Software support is limited. The tv picture is top notch and the mpeg-2 quality is outstanding. Don't use the software that comes with it (Only the drivers), then you can update to the newest drivers at ati.
Get it here https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=294

I use Media Center Edition 2005 xp for recording scheduled TV (PVR and all that stuff) and viewing full screen (which isn't much). I did download mmc 9.03 from ati, but only for viewing tv in a browser window (that part is pretty cool). But, again, mmc won't allow recording s-video with the theater pro (it does with all regular ati tuner cards but not with the hardware encoder as found in the theater pro). I use DVD moviefactory 2.0 for capturing video. If you have DVD MF the screen goes blank when I hit record (this is normal). After I'm done capturing I just exit the program and I have a fantastic mpeg-2 file. I use other programs for editing and burning. Or you can spend the $50 for Christv.

If you don't have Media Center Edition, I guess you can use the Cyberlink software that comes with it for viewing and scheduling TV recordings. I've heard it is pretty bad. I installed it for only a couple of minutes and it actually had a similar interface as found in Media Center Edition. I only looked for capturing from S-video in that program (which there was none) and then I uninstalled it.

Let me know how things are going.

Good Luck.

Brent

[zoobie]

If you're a newbie, getting a highly technical cap card is about the last thing you'll want to do.

I'm thinking a dac-100 or advc-100 would suit you much better. Regardless of your selection, you won't be able to get all the frames without a TBC which is hundreds of $ alone.

How many 2 hour tapes do you have? You can store them on a large hard drive (about 14gb per hour) or burn them to a dvd datadisc if you have a burner and go from there.

[bbeiler]

zoobie,
That dac-100 looks pretty cool. That's the first I've seen it. The site I found mentioned that it has a 25Mb/sec DV hardware capture. Would that be able capture DV-avi through the s-video inputs rather than the firewire?

Although, I'm not sure if that would simplify things for drakefamily2. Getting outstanding Mpeg-2 quality "right out of the box" really makes things simple. I've done the whole Huffyuv to TMPG (even CCE 2.5) and the end result is questionably better. In fact compared to an 8000 bit rate hardware capture of the theater pro I've found that it is slightly worse using tmpg to do the transcoding. Plus, learning how to use tmpg and cce (AVIsynth) was not an easy task. As long as one has the correct software capture capabilities with the theater pro 550 it really is quite simple. Plus it has a tv tuner (nice bonus).

Now if the end result isn't Mpeg-2 than I would agree there are other options out there. I don't like to rely on editing programs to do my transoding (avi to mpeg2 etc...). I'd rather have top quality MPeg-2 going into the editing program so the program can't screw up the transcoding process (as long as the program in use doesn't mess with DVD "compliant" files) Just a thought.

Brent

[zoobie]

Well, I don't think editing mpg2 is recommended...here at least.

Yes...the dac-100 caps via firewire, s-video, composite, and stereo rca plugs for audio...basically everything. Outputs the same way. Great for converting your old vhs tapes to digital, too. When you're finished with it, you can sell it on eBay...

You can check these and more out here.