Beginning a Conversion Project: Hi8 to Digital

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Level 1

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Beginning a Conversion Project: Hi8 to Digital

Guys,

I am just beginning a conversion process. I am starting with iMovie HD 5.0.2 (111). I have about 75-100 tapes to convert. Some with small amounts of video per tape to others with over an hour per tape.

I am using a Dazzle Hollywood DV-Bridge with standard RCA cable? (The cable with red, white, and yellow tips) connecting the camera to the bridge. I am using a firewire cable to connect the bridge to my Mac.

The camera and bridge also have s-video plug ins that I am not using at present. Would I get any beter quality by improrting using s-video?

I would like to import the tapes and save them as raw footage for later editing. I will probably convert each raw file to iMovie for archiving also.

The raw files I have created are very large. 250 MB to 29 GB.

Questions?
1. Is there any advantage in moving to iMovie HD 6? Or any other conversion program?

2. Is there any way to backup/archive a raw file that is 29 GB to a DVD ?

3. Using my present equipment, what type of external storage device would you suggest? I like the spped of Firewire 800. I am looking at OWC's Mercury Elite AL Pro drives. Your thoughts?

4. If you were to start this project from scratch, what equipment would you use?

Thank In Advance For Your Assistance,

PB G4 1.5GHz 1.5 GB SDRAM, Mac OS X (10.4.7), Internal HD: 80 MB HD, External HD: Lacie d2 Extreme 250 MB connected vis FireWire 800 Port

Posted on Jul 29, 2006 11:30 AM

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Answer 1

PT

Level 7

20,894 points

Jul 29, 2006 3:04 PM in response to Greg Maranto

Hi Greg,
For simply trying to get your analog tapes digitized and into your computer, there is no advantage between any of the iMovie versions since you are primarily looking for a way to capture the footage. It is in the editing that the version of iMovie might have adnavtages.
HD format digital video, as you now know, uses a LOT of drive space. Roughly 13GB per hour. So for a LOT of tapes you will want to get a LOT of hard drive space. External hard drives that support FW is the way to go at least for the short term and getting footage into the Mac. FW400 is fast enough for iMovie use but if your computer supports it and you can find reasonable priced FW800 enclosures or completely external drives with FW800, go for it.
But if FW400 is ok with you, one can throw together their own external FW supported drive very cheaply, for example a 300GB one could be put together for only $122 and five minutes of your time with a philips screw driver to put it together.
But like I said, LOTS of drive space needed. So take your typical "300GB" drive. A 300GB drive is really only 279.4GB. Say you fill the drive up leaving 10GB free, that's 269GB. Divided by 13GB (per hour of video) and you get less than 21 hours of video. Hi8 typically holds two hours per tape, so consider about 10 full Hi8 tapes would fill the drive. You say you have 75-100 tapes! So you are going to want LOTs of drives.
Many of us archive our digital footage back to digital tape. I too am slowly importing my old Hi8 tapes with my Digital8 camcorder. Once in my Mac I do some light editing and share the digital version back to Digital8 (Hi8) tape. You could do that, but you would need to invest in a digital camcorder, most likely a MiniDV model. You would have to do a cost trade off and see what worked best for you. For example, the 300GB drive I mention can be had for $90 from Outpost.com shipped (that is not including an enclosure). If you put 20 hours or footage on it, pulled it from the enclosure and stored it, that would be one way. The other way would be to use 20 MiniDV tapes in a digital camcorder. The question is, what is cheaper? $90 for the one drive or the price of 20 tapes?
Tapes are probably cheaper, say $2.25 each, so 20x2.25 = $45 so half the price. Yet, they are much slower to export to and later if you need footage off one, you have to find that tape then fast forward to the spot you want to import your footage. If you look around, you can sometimes find hard drives for close to 20-cents per gig on special or after rebate. This starts to even the price difference.
Patrick

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Answer 2

MacRob

Level 1

5 points

Aug 1, 2006 5:24 PM in response to PT

Patrick,
You mentioned many users archive back to digital tape, besides avoiding storage issues, what is the advantage? Do MiniDV tapes last longer than 8MM tapes? That is the whole reason I am importing footage from 8MM to the MAC due to the shelve life of the 8MM tapes. If the DV tapes last, that would be the way to go. Thoughts?
Thanks

MAC G5 2.1GHz Mac OS X (10.4.7)

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Answer 3

PT

Level 7

20,894 points

Aug 1, 2006 7:43 PM in response to MacRob

I don't think there is any difference between MiniDV tape vs. Hi8 tapes as far as the tape itself. But where you get the difference is that analog footage will start to age and your footage will begin to degrade. Loss of color, noise, color shoft, whatever. With digital tape, as long as the ones and zeros can be read, your footage can be read back into the mac exactly as it was written out. So in theory the tape could degrade some and you could still recover a perfect copy. Where as the same tape with analog you might still be able to import back in, but the quality might be down.
In my case, I am working from tapes as old as 13 years back when my daughter was born. So I used my Digital8 camcorder to play back and digitize the old analog tapes into iMovie project. Some light editing, then back to digital tape. So now the footage is digitized and on fresh tapes, so I basically started the time to zero again and as I mentioned above, some degrading of tape quality on a digital tape is probably not nearly as detrimental as on an analog tape.
Also I feel the Digital8 tape archives are simply a holding step until something better comes along. Either larger cheaper hard drive, blu-ray DVDs, or whatever it is that comes next. After all, my Digital8 camcorder is not going to last forever. You can still buy brand new Digital8 camcorders, but not nearly that many anymore. Even Sony, the main pusher of that format now only sells a single model of Digital8 camcorder.
So back to your situation, if your analog tapes are a lot of older ones like mine, then getting them digitized and onto the computer is one thing. If you then archive them back to digital tape, then like mine you have reset the clock and bought time. What is important for stuff like video is that you always refresh it forward to the next format. You don't want to end up someday like people with old Beta vido tapes, 8" floppies, and 8mm film movies and no equipment that can play back what is on those.
Patrick

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Answer 4

Aug 1, 2006 11:17 PM in response to MacRob

I agree with PT regarding putting your Hi-8 tapes into a more stable format. I, too, have converted all my old tapes, some VHS, some Hi-8. I copied them using my video camcorder onto DV tapes. I then import those into my iMovies, making DVDs for each year's worth of video and still photos.

I must be older than the rest of you...:) my oldest VHS tapes are from 1982 when my son was born--just photos from my daughter's birth in 1979. We used VHS for about 10 years, then got a Hi-8 camera and vtr playback unit. Another 6 years, and then the DV camcorder.

Problems with the old tapes are aging and degrading. I was surprised that many of my VHS tapes looked much better after being digitized. The Hi-8s were always good quality, but I had difficulties with both the Hi-8 camera and the VCR playback. Time took its toll, and the camera played nicely but wouldn't rewind. The player would rewind, but would get stuck and wouldn't play. With a lot of effort and crossing from one to the other, I finally got all the tapes onto DV. I have now put many of them into iMovies and DVDs.

I export my created iMovies back to DV tape for storage. As PT pointed out, the amount of space taken up by the actual iMovies is too large for convenient storage. You could convert them to QT versions and save those....using much less space. You can also make and save your DVD projects as disk images.

I am looking to the future and if DVDs go the way of VHS tapes, I think the DV tapes can be used to make the same movies in the new format. I am also hopeful that the DVDs themselves could be converted....but I will probably be too old to care about doing it myself!

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Answer 5

MacRob

Level 1

5 points

Aug 2, 2006 7:25 PM in response to PT

I agree. I am starting the transition from analog camcorder footage, using a Digital camcorder as pass thru but have quickly gobbled up the 250 gig I started with, so getting these back to MiniDV tapes seems to be a good solution until, as you mentioned, better storgae options are available.

One more question, is it easy to archive back to DV, or could it be done while I pass thru? I could not figure out how to do that.

Thanks

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Answer 6

Aug 2, 2006 8:50 PM in response to MacRob

I just 'share' the movie back to the camcorder and capture the footage on a DV tape in the camera. You don't want to 'pass-through' because you are not using the camera as the vehicle but as the endpoint.

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Answer 7

Aug 2, 2006 10:20 PM in response to Greg Maranto

Would I get any beter quality by improrting using s-video?

Do a test, but I believe with Hi8 input s-video is better. With VHS input I have found not much difference and AFAIR composite video was (surprisingly) minimally better (AFAIR s-video was TOO crisp and had some minor artifacts). YMMV.

1. iMovie 6 has fewer bugs compared to iMovie 5 but this is not a significant difference.

http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/iMovieHD_6bugs.html

http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/iMovieHD_5bugs.html

iMovie 4 lets you trim the clips but this is also possible with iMovie 5-6 by exporting selected clips to Full Quality DV.

2. Archiving to DVD is slow and clumsy and needs a backup program that can span huge DV clips to multiple DVDs. I'd suggest using large FW drives instead:

3. WiebeTech ComboDock lets you treat large ATA drives like large floppies via FW. It is somewhat pricey but I have used it with good success and recommened it for huge DV backups!

I also have a OWC Mercury Elite Pro for daily use and iMovie project backups.

I have a few loose 250 GB Deskstars for the WiebeTech and one inside the OWC enclosure.

I prefer FW800 over FW400 because it is slightly faster. USB2 might sometimes also be nice although in practice I have used it only to test that it works...

BTW, I archive all my edited footage as up to 9 min 27 sec .dv clips on the few Deskstars in the closet. With the WiebeTech it is VERY fast to retrieve the clips for re-editing. THE drawback is that clips must be manually split into scenes, though.

I have always used this shortcut for fast iMovie v1-6 import with no ill effects:

http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/iMovieHD_6_bugs.html#quick_DVimport

I also use D8 tapes to store the edited footage, just in case some Deskstar decides to break (storing the same date on TWO Deskstars still seems like overkill)...

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Answer 8

MacRob

Level 1

5 points

Aug 3, 2006 4:20 PM in response to Beverly Maneatis

Thank You,
RobM

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