Capture Resolution for Hi8mm Camcorder??

[mikewg]

I'm going to buy this video camera tonight:

http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=11099229&m=1&cat=33&scat=35

And had a question about it. I've never dealt with Hi8mm before, but am planning to record with the camera and capture directly to my computer. What resolution should I capture at? When I capture from my VCR, I capture at the standard 352x240 or whatever it is... should I capture at the same resolution as a VCR, or does Hi8mm have its own resolution? Thanks!

Mike

[Shannafey]

It depends on what you want to do with it. If you are going to vcd, just capture at 352 x 240. I do this all the time with my Hi8 footage and it looks great. If you are going to DVD or editing to go back out to tape, use the highest resolution your card will give you. Hi8 can achieve awesome quality. The tape isn't as dependable as DV or SVHS, but it is a good cheap medium to shoot on. I, personally would go the extra mile and get a DV camera, but if that's what is in your price range, Hi8 will definitely do. As I said, it isn't very dependable. You don't want to keep running the tape. Transfer to a new medium, preferably digital.

[Innershield]

I have a better Digital 8mm I will sell you for the same price if you are interested Then you won't have to worry about what resolution and bitrate to capture at. Better picture too.

[mikewg]

No thanks, I really like this particular model. Plus, I wouldn't be able to get a three year warantee (includes cleanings, which are $50 each) if I bought through you. Also, I want to keep away from digital. Anyone know the resolution to capture at?

[SingSing]

The 8mm and DV camcorder has one problem.
They output huge AVI files.

You may want to look into capture in high bit rate mpeg2,
then recompress in standrad NTSC SVCD in 480x480 resolution.

This approach give me the best result from tapped material.

[Innershield]

I had a Hi8 and I just capture at the highest resolution possible. Then your finished product can be a lower resolution. If you are going to make svcd or dvd then definitely capture at somethingx480

I am curious as to why you want to stay awat fromn digital??

[mikewg]

Sorry, didn't read the earlier post first. Thanks for the info, I'll just capture at VCD until I move into DVD Burner levels. I'm not interested in digital video, the prices are out of my range and I do want to buy from a dependable source.

[mikewg]

Capture size doesn't matter to me... I have a 60 Gig hard drive that can capture 6 hours, and the camcorder can only record 2 hours max so that's not an issue at all.

I want to stay away from DV because it seems like it's not worth the hassle. First of all, it's a lot more expensive for the camera than the one I'm looking at. Secondly, I'm capturing to VCD format so I'm assuming that the quality won't be too different between the two mediums. I'm not asking for a flame war here about the debates between the two mediums, I'm just saying that when I convert the AVI to MPG, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to see a huge difference between the two formats. Also, to upload DV to your computer, you need all sorts of Firewire and everything else... it took me forever to set up my computer just right to capture TV and Video, I'm not too excited about adding things to capture digital video also. My capture card will work just fine for that.

So unless someone says something super convincing as to why I should go to Digital Video, I'm going to buy from Best Buy tonight.

[Innershield]

ok this may not be super convincing but the digital cams record with a higher resolution for better picture quality and you can still capture to your computer the same way that you do with an analog cam. You don't have to use the firewire card etc.

[SingSing]

I am curious as to why you want to stay awat fromn digital??

I also have a digital viewcam. The quality of NTSC dvcam are
they are all interleaced.

So the de-interlace result look plastics, and the avi files they exported
are huge, so they filled up a 40GB drive quickly.

The only things going for them is easy to edit, and good
for making VCD that does not have a lot of movment ( this
exclude home video with running children, yuk ).