I'm looking to transfer some old 8mm Video Cassettes digitally to my computer. I then want to burn them to my DVD burner. What sort of equipment/software do I need? What's the easiest way to do this? Thanks.
8mm Video Cassettes to computer?
- Thread starter asabour
- Start date
VIVO should be simple.... plug your camcorder's output into the VIVO's Video In and using its included software (it does have, right?) just hit record!
I know it's not a *digital* solution, but Hi8 is not a digital tape... there is no digital solution I'm aware of. S-vid is probably the best you're gonna' get without borrowing some pro equipment from a TV station somewhere....
If you do it via PC, capture to avi at (I recommend) 352x240 resolution (a legal DVD resolution) preferably with Virtualdub, and convert to DVD compatible MPEG2 via a prog like TMPGenc. Then burn the MPEG2's onto a DVD.
Tape to DVD requires these steps:
1. Capture (or transfer) video from source (8mm tape in your case) to hard disk.
2. Edit video (if desired)
3. Encode video to MPEG2 format (MPEG2 is the DVD format)
4. Author and Burn the DVD
Here are short descriptions of each of the steps.
Capture/Transfer
---------------------
First of all, were your 8mm tapes recorded digitally or analog? That is, is your camcorder Hi-8 format or Digital-8 format? Do you even have your camcorder or just the tapes? This is very important to know before you make any decisions.
If your tapes are Digital-8 format, you can simply transfer them from your camcorder via a Firewire connection. This is simple and easy, results in excellent quality, and greatly simplifies your "video-capturing" task. Your computer needs a Firewire port for this -- if you don't have one, Firewire PCI cards can be had for $15. There are several free or sharware software packages available that will work fine. This process stores the video in DV format on your hard disk. It requires about 13.5GB per hour of video.
If your tapes are Hi-8 format, things become much more complex and you have many more options to consider because you need to do a true analog "capture" of your video. The VIVO card that you already have should work fine for this. You need a standard RCA to 1/8" audio cable (this depends on your VIVO connector -- you may need RCA on both ends) and either a composite RCA video cable or S-Video cable (if your camera supports it). All of these are pretty cheap and easily obtained. This type of capture can require from 4GB to 85GB per hour of video, depending on the quality that you desire. You can convert directly to MPEG2 during the capture if you like (and your machine is fast enough), but this won't result in the best quality and will greatly limit the amount of editing you can do with the captured video, as MPEG2 format is not really convenient for editing.
As you can see, you're going to need alot of free hard disk space.
Edit
----
Once you have gotten the video onto your computer, you will most likely need to edit your video with a video editing software package. This can be as simple as cutting out selected scenes or adding fancy graphics and transitions as well as a custom audio track. This is a huge topic unto itself and depends on your needs.
Encode
--------
Once your source video is how you want to see it on the DVD, it will need to be encoded for DVD format (MPEG2). This step requires a large amount of processing by your CPU and hard disk and can possibly take a very long time, depending on the quality you want and speed of your system. For example, on my 2.1Ghz machine, it takes about 5 hours to encode 1/2 hours of video (at highest quality settings). There are a few low-cost software packages available for this purpose and they can be very complex. Most of the complexity in this step involves the fact that you want your video to fit on a 4.7GB disk and you need to determine which quality/time tradeoffs are taken.
Author and Burn
-------------------
Once you have the MPEG2 version of the video, you need to "author" the DVD. This can be very simple (just the video without menus and options) or can be very complex, with animated menus and graphics and credits and such. You should have gotten some very basic tools with your DVD burner that will work fine for your first projects. It should also be capable of burning to the DVD disk itself.
I would recommend that you get an all-in-one software package like Ulead Video Studio 7 or Pinnacle Studio. These tools contain everything you need to go from tape to DVD and simplify the process a great deal. They will usually not get you the very highest quality results as choosing different tools for each step, but should result in pretty good DVDs.
As you can see, the world of digital video can be very complex. If you will be doing this often, you are well-advised to do some research. Check out DVDRHelp. You can spend 2 hours per day for 3 months on this topic and still have just scratched the surface of what there is to learn about digital video. Good luck...
1. Capture (or transfer) video from source (8mm tape in your case) to hard disk.
2. Edit video (if desired)
3. Encode video to MPEG2 format (MPEG2 is the DVD format)
4. Author and Burn the DVD
Here are short descriptions of each of the steps.
Capture/Transfer
---------------------
First of all, were your 8mm tapes recorded digitally or analog? That is, is your camcorder Hi-8 format or Digital-8 format? Do you even have your camcorder or just the tapes? This is very important to know before you make any decisions.
If your tapes are Digital-8 format, you can simply transfer them from your camcorder via a Firewire connection. This is simple and easy, results in excellent quality, and greatly simplifies your "video-capturing" task. Your computer needs a Firewire port for this -- if you don't have one, Firewire PCI cards can be had for $15. There are several free or sharware software packages available that will work fine. This process stores the video in DV format on your hard disk. It requires about 13.5GB per hour of video.
If your tapes are Hi-8 format, things become much more complex and you have many more options to consider because you need to do a true analog "capture" of your video. The VIVO card that you already have should work fine for this. You need a standard RCA to 1/8" audio cable (this depends on your VIVO connector -- you may need RCA on both ends) and either a composite RCA video cable or S-Video cable (if your camera supports it). All of these are pretty cheap and easily obtained. This type of capture can require from 4GB to 85GB per hour of video, depending on the quality that you desire. You can convert directly to MPEG2 during the capture if you like (and your machine is fast enough), but this won't result in the best quality and will greatly limit the amount of editing you can do with the captured video, as MPEG2 format is not really convenient for editing.
As you can see, you're going to need alot of free hard disk space.
Edit
----
Once you have gotten the video onto your computer, you will most likely need to edit your video with a video editing software package. This can be as simple as cutting out selected scenes or adding fancy graphics and transitions as well as a custom audio track. This is a huge topic unto itself and depends on your needs.
Encode
--------
Once your source video is how you want to see it on the DVD, it will need to be encoded for DVD format (MPEG2). This step requires a large amount of processing by your CPU and hard disk and can possibly take a very long time, depending on the quality you want and speed of your system. For example, on my 2.1Ghz machine, it takes about 5 hours to encode 1/2 hours of video (at highest quality settings). There are a few low-cost software packages available for this purpose and they can be very complex. Most of the complexity in this step involves the fact that you want your video to fit on a 4.7GB disk and you need to determine which quality/time tradeoffs are taken.
Author and Burn
-------------------
Once you have the MPEG2 version of the video, you need to "author" the DVD. This can be very simple (just the video without menus and options) or can be very complex, with animated menus and graphics and credits and such. You should have gotten some very basic tools with your DVD burner that will work fine for your first projects. It should also be capable of burning to the DVD disk itself.
I would recommend that you get an all-in-one software package like Ulead Video Studio 7 or Pinnacle Studio. These tools contain everything you need to go from tape to DVD and simplify the process a great deal. They will usually not get you the very highest quality results as choosing different tools for each step, but should result in pretty good DVDs.
As you can see, the world of digital video can be very complex. If you will be doing this often, you are well-advised to do some research. Check out DVDRHelp. You can spend 2 hours per day for 3 months on this topic and still have just scratched the surface of what there is to learn about digital video. Good luck...
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