Capturing analogue for editing

[robbery]

Hello

After years of reading this site, tinkering and false starts I recently upgraded my computer finally to start editing various old Hi8 tapes. It seems the motherboard doesn't recognise my old ATI AIW 8500DV, so looks like it's time to get a new capture device. What are my options?

1. I can get a new capture card. I had been intending to capture in Huffy for editing purposes. Do I want to buy a new (AGP) graphics card that can do uncompressed Huffy capture? Or just buy a new cheap AGP graphics card and a dedicated PCI capture card? Any recommendations for that? - it seems difficult to find a recommendation for .avi capture.

2. I buy something like the Canopus ADVC55

http://www.canopus.com/products/ADVC55/index.php

These things seem to be highly regarded here. It seems that, although compressed, DV format is (obviously?) good enough to edit from - because the frames themselves are compressed individually, like a stream of JPEGs, is that right?

3. So a Firewire device like that would serve me well, except that if I ever want to buy a camcorder, I could instead put the price of the Canopus towards that. Will one of these do the same job?

http://www.canon.co.uk/For_Home/Product_Finder/Camcorders/Digital/mvx460/index.asp?Com...PageID=26346#1

So I'm leaning towards 3, unless someone can recommend a capture card. Have I got all that right?

Thanks everyone

Robert

[ranchhand]

Since I am a relative newbie, I may be off the wall here, so don't laugh too hard if I have some of this wrong. You have analog camcorder tapes you want to capture, and then what do you want to do with them? Burn to DVD disks for family archive, Author, etc.?? If the above is true, do you presently have an analog camcorder that will play them?

[robbery]

Oh, sorry. Yes, I want to capture Hi8 (and some VHS) - holiday videos for example - and then I want to edit and archive it all. Output format? DVD, I suppose, or just leave it on the computer.

I've got an old Hi8 camcorder that will just about play the tapes long enough to capture the footage.

Thanks

Robert

[edDV]

The Canon MVX460 seems to have the analog to DV pass through feature so should do what you want. Ignor all the NTSC black level discussions. PAL works fine.

Use a DV format native editor/DVD authoring program and you are ready to go.

A simple program for capture over IEEE-1394 is WinDV.

[ozymango]

Well, I like the option #3 route myself, so I'll second that line of thinking. I'm in the US, and have a JVC DV camcorder that serves me very well as a passthrough for my Beta and VHS stuff I'm slowly (too slowly!) transferring to DVD. As for quality, if you use a good encoder (I like mediaconcept myself) and don't try to fit too much on a single DVD, I can consistently turn out DVDs that look just like my tape footage. I'm sure my eye is missing something in there but for practical purposes, I'm happy.

True, you do have to pay attention to IRE levels (can be very confusing to figure this one out), but the guides here will help you do things right [blatant plug: edDV has a thread in here somewhere that talks about seeing levels in Premiere that I printed out and keep by my computer whenever I'm working on a project].

Good luck and have fun!

[ozymango]

Ignor all the NTSC black level discussions. PAL works fine.

Okay, you don't even have to worry about that!

I don't know how I would have ever survived making my first video if not for everybody at this site.

[ranchhand]

I am doing the same thing right now with old analog camcorder tapes. This forum recommended the Hauppauge 250PVR video capture card, and use the (free) Win TV2000 capture software from Hauppauge with it. Works a charm. Creates high quality mpeg2 files, and after that skys' the limit as to what you want to do. I personally use Pinnacle 10.7, and if set up properly works terrific on my computer, but other editors will import and work with mpeg2 files perfectly as well. Many don't like Pinnacle, but it works a treat for me. I am sure that there are other, lower-cost editors that will work. The Hauppauge card came with Ulead 5.0 (or was it 3.0??), but I wanted an editor that was newer with more power. After that you can burn to your DVD from your editor. Stay away from Nero, the quality just is not there at all. Hope this helps a bit.

[edDV]

Ignor all the NTSC black level discussions. PAL works fine.

Okay, you don't even have to worry about that!

I don't know how I would have ever survived making my first video if not for everybody at this site.

For those using NTSC DV cams, this link describes the issues. The results can be excellent.

"NTSC IRE levels and DV camcorder Pass-Through capture".
https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=319733

Maybe this could be made a sticky?

[ozymango]

"NTSC IRE levels and DV camcorder Pass-Through capture".
https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=319733

Maybe this could be made a sticky?

Thanks, edDV!!!