Digitize Hi8 from Digital8 camcorder...

You can see for yourself whether or not FCP X supports this kind of import - there is a free trial version.

One other likely option is Quicktime Player - its "Record Movie" feature can record from a firewire input. Since that is already on your mac, it does not hurt to try.

Keep in mind that, even if iMovie's import was not great, resolution of Hi8 cassetes is not great to begin with, and there is a conversion from analog to digital; that will never change, regardless of software. Possible tape deterioration over time can even make it worse. So keep your expectations in check.

Just to add about iMovie that I don't believe the problem is so much in the import, but rather in the export. (I understand there are export settings that do pretty well in preserving the image quality.)

Russ

To be sure, I mentioned iMovie because many people who have reported problems capturing from analogue devices ended up using iMovie successfully. I have had good luck using both FCP 7 and FCP X using an Analogue/Digital converter box, and although I can't recall whether I've used QT, I would imagine it would perform the same as FCP.

Here is a thread that is interesting and should be helpful.

Russ

As of the analog to digital conversion I hoped that it would give me the best possible result as it gets performed inside a camcorder which also does digital recording. Btw, is the firewire output from a Digital8 camcorder actually a DV signal?

The Digital8 import to iMovie actually transcoded the signal, which (unnecessarily?) reduces the quality and unfortunately increases the disk storage requirements. Does the QT Player Record Movie work like this too?

Yes, the output from a Digital8 camcorder is DV. Digital8 was basically DV, except for the tape, which was physically in the same form as Hi8 tapes. I had one of those cameras some years ago, and used it successfully with "old" iMovie HD (in those versions, there was no transcoding, it worked on the DV format). The new iMovie, apparently, does not work that way.

If I remember correctly, if you feed the DV signal to QT Player, it will record without transcoding, and the result is a mov file using the DV codec. But I only used it briefly, with my brother's camera, so I may be wrong.

FCP X should import the footage as native DV, which may not look all that good on the desktop if you have recently become accustomed to editing hi-def.

The quality however will be normal DV with no transcoding or other losses.

I recently imported some 20 hours of VHS footage which looked pretty poor but that was simply because original VHS images are appalling compared with the hi-def video I have become accustomed to.