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Hi-8 Camcorder to DVD - What would you recommend to get Hardware / Software wise to do this?

Analog

Analog

Lifer
Okay, my kids are growing up and I'd like to get some of their camcorded videos to DVD. What is the best card to drop in, and what software would be good to do this type of work?

Oh, and yes, I don't have a DVD writer in my rig yet, so advice there would be nice. 🙂🙂
 
This isn't really a recommendation, just information:

My Sony Digital 8 camcorder will play Hi8 tapes just fine. I have captured Hi8 tapes using my Digital8's firewire connection in conjunction with MS Windows Movie Maker.
 
Originally posted by: NuclearNed
This isn't really a recommendation, just information:

My Sony Digital 8 camcorder will play Hi8 tapes just fine. I have captured Hi8 tapes using my Digital8's firewire connection in conjunction with MS Windows Movie Maker.
Click to expand...

No kidding, I did not know this. So it is a dual analog and digital player? My camcorder is a Sony as well, albeit an older one.
 
Get a firewire card ($20) for your PC if you don't already have one.

Much better way to do it than any capture card.

You can use Movie Maker to start, and if you want to get more advanced there are a host of other programs out there that will enable you to get better results.

For example, this is my procedure (don't get scared, it really isn't as complicated as it looks - and really not necessary, if you don't care about the upmost quality),

1. Capture DV video via firewire to NTFS formatted hard drive with Scenalyzer.
2. Rip WAV file out of the raw AVI video you just captured with VirtualDubMPEG.
3. Convert WAV file to Dolby compliant AC3 with ffmpegui.
4. Calculate proper bitrate for DVD using any one of a dozen free calculators out there.
5. Frame serve the raw AVI (video only) to Cinema Craft Encoder (or Tmpenc) for AVI to MPEG2 conversion. (This could take hours depending on which program you are using, and the size of the file being worked with)
5. Recombine the MPEG2 video and AC3 audio using TmpEnc Plus or TmpEnc DVD Author.
6. Any final editing is done at this point.
7. Use TmpEnc to do the final encoding to DVD complaint VOB files.
8. Burn to DVD.

Now, Movie Maker will do this all in one shot - but it won't be nearly as customizable and the finished product wont look as good. The same goes for a bunch of other "all-in-one" suites out there.

Go over to VideoHelp for more info.

 
Originally posted by: CFster
Get a firewire card ($20) for your PC if you don't already have one.

Much better way to do it than any capture card.

You can use Movie Maker to start, and if you want to get more advanced there are a host of other programs out there that will enable you to get better results.

For example, this is my procedure (don't get scared, it really isn't as complicated as it looks - and really not necessary, if you don't care about the upmost quality),

1. Capture DV video via firewire to NTFS formatted hard drive with Scenalyzer.
2. Rip WAV file out of the raw AVI video you just captured with VirtualDubMPEG.
3. Convert WAV file to Dolby compliant AC3 with ffmpegui.
4. Calculate proper bitrate for DVD using any one of a dozen free calculators out there.
5. Frame serve the raw AVI (video only) to Cinema Craft Encoder (or Tmpenc) for AVI to MPEG2 conversion. (This could take hours depending on which program you are using, and the size of the file being worked with)
5. Recombine the MPEG2 video and AC3 audio using TmpEnc Plus or TmpEnc DVD Author.
6. Any final editing is done at this point.
7. Use TmpEnc to do the final encoding to DVD complaint VOB files.
8. Burn to DVD.

Now, Movie Maker will do this all in one shot - but it won't be nearly as customizable and the finished product wont look as good. The same goes for a bunch of other "all-in-one" suites out there.

Go over to VideoHelp for more info.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the link. My Hi-8 doesn't have a firewire output, so what good would a firewire card do for me?
 
Originally posted by: yellowfiero
Originally posted by: NuclearNed
This isn't really a recommendation, just information:

My Sony Digital 8 camcorder will play Hi8 tapes just fine. I have captured Hi8 tapes using my Digital8's firewire connection in conjunction with MS Windows Movie Maker.
Click to expand...

No kidding, I did not know this. So it is a dual analog and digital player? My camcorder is a Sony as well, albeit an older one.
Click to expand...

It is a Sony Digital 8 camcorder that I bought in 2000 - I would give the model, but I don't know it and I'm at work so I can't look. It will play both digital tapes and analog. The quality of the capture is about the same, regardless of whether it is digital or analog.
 
I used a Leadtek Expert capture card to capture via analogue direct to Mpeg2 video but the quality isn't quite what I expected. The card has 10bit color capture and accepts Svideo and Stereo so it's pretty good, but, I think it'd be a lot better to capture to AVI (uncompressed) and then recompress later. The on-the-fly MPEG2 capture is software based and the CPU (XP 2500+) can't do optimal bitrate capture/coding in 720x480 resolution.

For a sample I used 352x480 (Half D1) which worked pretty well (no dropped frames, picture looked good) and really is more resolution than I need for Hi8 Analogue... I'm just lazy and wanted to capture in best quality first time... even if it's a waste of resources/overkill. I was thinking of getting a Hauppauge WinPVR250 which has hardware mpeg2 encoding but can't justify the price--yet.

The real killer part, for me, is trimming down the crap video I don't want. Part of me doesn't want to delete anything and the other part of me wants to make the perfect home movie and there's no middle ground so I just get frustrated and give up. Anyway, the editing is a pita in MPEG2 format. There's a few good programs out there I guess but nothing that made me happy. Most want to re-code the video after you make edits and the one that didn't had some bugs in it that caused the video to get screwed up if you cropped out cetain frames. Been a while so maybe some updates to that.

In the meantime I've upgraded to a MiniDV camcorder, but, that one needs transcoding to go on DVD and I haven't found the best settings for that yet. Last time I checked Videohelp.com stuff it wasn't obvious what to use once I've got the video over in it's native format. Anyway, that's another topic.... but check out videohelp.com, lots of good info out there.


 
Thanks for the link. My Hi-8 doesn't have a firewire output, so what good would a firewire card do for me?
Click to expand...

Sorry, I thought you had Firewire.

Looks like you'll need a video capture card.




 
I am goingto get the Hauppage Win TV PVR 250 USB (or something like that) it has hardware encoding 🙂

Cheers,
Aquaman
 
For PCI cards, the Hauppage PVR-150 is just as good as the -250, it's just a newer design that's cheaper to make (so sells cheaper).
 
If you're planning on purchasing a DV camcorder sometime soon (or if you can borrow one) an alternative would be to use the camera for the analog -> digital conversion. Many of the DV camcorders have an S/Video input: dub the analog video onto digital tape, then upload to your computer via firewire.

One poster recommended Pinnacle Studio. I found this to be the most frustrating software I've ever encountered. Creating a movie was easy, but rendering would regularly fail and cause program to crash. Deleting and reinserting video transitions would eventually allow the movie to be rendered, but only after much hair pulling.
 
I spent LOTS of time capturing footy off of a Sony Hi8 camcorder (400 lines IIRC). I had a Radeon VIVO though. Your camcorder probably only has S-video Out and Component Out, so you will need a capture card. If it was digital, I think you can use your camcorder in conjuction with a firewire or USB adapter for capture, but that point is moot I suppose!

For capture cards, I hear the Hauppage PVR models are best. They might include software already that you can use for capture. I used the ATi capture software when I did it. I generally captured to MPEG1 IIRC, then edited it and outputted to max quality divx. Perhaps things have changed now though, and there may be better codecs to encode in if you're trying to get a decent amount of compression. Anyway, when you get your capture card, PM me and I can try and help you with capture settings so you get good quality captures. VirtualDub is a good program for editing. It captures also, but I think I got too many dropped frames on my 1.33ghz, but modern CPUs can prolly capture a lot better.
 
Originally posted by: RandomCoil
If you're planning on purchasing a DV camcorder sometime soon (or if you can borrow one) an alternative would be to use the camera for the analog -> digital conversion. Many of the DV camcorders have an S/Video input: dub the analog video onto digital tape, then upload to your computer via firewire.

One poster recommended Pinnacle Studio. I found this to be the most frustrating software I've ever encountered. Creating a movie was easy, but rendering would regularly fail and cause program to crash. Deleting and reinserting video transitions would eventually allow the movie to be rendered, but only after much hair pulling.
Click to expand...

Exactly Why I mentioned version 9 WITH THE PATCH😉

Version 8 was garbage in the end because it crashed so much, and version 9 was almost there. With the patch it has been flawless.
 
Originally posted by: RandomCoil
Many of the DV camcorders have an S/Video input: dub the analog video onto digital tape, then upload to your computer via firewire.
Click to expand...

Actually you don't even need to put onto tape - most DV camcorders can pass the signal right through doing the conversion on the fly. Mine has been sitting behind my TIVO for the last two months running on AC power - just leave it on. I can bring up video on my PC anytime I want.

One poster recommended Pinnacle Studio. I found this to be the most frustrating software I've ever encountered. Creating a movie was easy, but rendering would regularly fail and cause program to crash. Deleting and reinserting video transitions would eventually allow the movie to be rendered, but only after much hair pulling.
Click to expand...

Cinema Craft Encoder for raw type 2 AVI to DVD compliant MPEG2 conversion (encoding). Hands down the best program out there. Tmpgenc a close second. Actually Tmpgenc is a little better for SVCDs.







 
Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
For PCI cards, the Hauppage PVR-150 is just as good as the -250, it's just a newer design that's cheaper to make (so sells cheaper).
Click to expand...

I want the usb version because it's a real biotch getting to the back of my computer........... dang computer deesk.

Cheers,
Aquaman
 
Originally posted by: RandomCoil
If you're planning on purchasing a DV camcorder sometime soon (or if you can borrow one) an alternative would be to use the camera for the analog -> digital conversion. Many of the DV camcorders have an S/Video input: dub the analog video onto digital tape, then upload to your computer via firewire.
Click to expand...
I'm counting on using this method in the future. I tried at least four different video capture cards and returned them all. I was going to go with the Digital8 for backward compatability, but the current Digital8 camcorders aren't as nice as I'd like, performance and feature-wise. I gotta get this new camcorder before my Hi-8 unit dies, or I'll have to buy a Hi-8 VCR as well!

BTW, can't the digital camcorder convert the analog signal without "dubbing onto digital tape"?
 
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