Converting 8mm tape to DVD

Take your tapes to some "pro" (pay the money) service and tell them you want .dv (DV Stream) copies made.
Bring the external hard drive (only 20 minutes fit on a DVD) so they can move the converted files.
You do not want to convert to DVD formats as they require additional steps to allow editing and will reduce video quality.

John,
I have done something similar to what you are proposing. I converted all my old VHS and Hi-8 tapes of our family to miniDV tapes and have finished creating iMovies of the majority of them, and burning them to DVD. So I am using a two-step method of importing into iMovie--first onto DV tapes, then importing that footage into iMovie.

I chose to record the original footage onto miniDV tapes first for two reasons. One, I was not sure how long it would take to make movies of many years of videos and photos and some of my old VHS tapes were already beginning to degrade. I was afraid that they would worsen, so I wanted to capture them onto digital tape and then I wouldn't have to worry about losing more quality.
Second, although I have both a Hi-8 VCR and a Hi-8 camcorder, neither is working properly. One lets me play back the video and record it to my digital miniDV camcorder, but it will not permit using reverse; the other would easily rewind the tapes, but wouldn't play them. I didn't want to have to buy a Hi-8 camcorder just to convert 30 tapes.

So, now I have a container of all of my original raw footage. It is about the size of two stacked shoeboxes. I have made DVDs of our family's movies for a 20-year period and I have 7 years to go! Then, I am going to do one DVD for each side of the family's very old photos--no movies from then--from 1890s-1960s.

As for quality, what you see in iMovie is much less clear and bright than what is created on the DVD.

It is a matter of personal preference. I find it easy to make the movies in iMovie with my videos and photos. I agree with you--I certainly would not pay to have it done. No one else would know how I want it to be, and I also would not want to pay out that kind of money for something I could have done better.

I know that those who create slideshows from photos from within iDVD report that the quality of the photos is better than creating the same slideshow in iMovie. However, iMovie allows for more creative options. Since my early footage is VHS, and the photos are scanned-in snapshots, I have been more than happy with the quality of my subsequent DVDs.

I am about to begin an iMovie using original DV tape footage and digital photos. I do notice that the photos are very blurry in iMovie, and I will be checking carefully when I get the DVD finished to see if quality will be an issue.

Finally, I did notice that distortion at the bottom of my iMovies, but it is not there in the DVD, nor is it on the DV tape of the finished iMovie that I export back to my camcorder.

I guess I am paranoid about backups, but I keep a copy of all our DVDs in our safe-deposit box, as well as giving a copy to each of our children and having an extra set just in case something happens to our working set. In addition, I do export each finished iMovie to DV tape. I know that DVD disks can crack, break, get stepped on, melt or become heat-damaged, or get scratched. I wanted to have the movies saved in another digital format to be converted whenever DVDs become as obsolete as VHS tapes.
Oh, I also create a disk image for every iDVD project, and I save those disk images to an external hard drive in case something happens to one of the burned disks and I need to make another copy. (Told you I was paranoid!) 🙂

Good luck with your project!

Hi

My penny. I guess that a cleaning tape could be of use to the Camera.

alt. If Your internal (start-up) hard disk goes under 10Gb free many strange
things can occure. I keep mine to minimum of 25Gb free.

Yours Bengt W

Were all your old videos recorded in 12 bit? Changing the settings on the camcorder may help, but only if you re-record at 16-bit. That means you have to export from iMovie back to your camcorder to a new DV tape, and then re-import that since it is now in 16-bit audio. I had to do that for a tape that was at 12-bit. In iMovie it had lots of audio distortion. It had been recorded at 12-bit when I was unaware that the setting could be changed on the camcorder 😟 The re-recording worked great and I had no audio problems after that.

I would try that on one of your shorter movies, or maybe just a few clips to see how it works.
Sorry if that means you may have to import, export and reimport all those videos! 🙂

Just to cover an iMovie problem you should also do a trashing of iMovie's preference file--just in case it IS iMovie that is having the difficulty.
Close iMovie and go: Home file(YourUserName)/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imovie.plist
Drag this plist file to the trash. Don't worry...iMovie will create a new fresh one when you reopen it.
Relaunch iMovie.

See if the footage plays any better. I doubt it, I think the 12-bit recording is the problem here.