Answers here for 8mm video capture

[troyy01]

I should probably mention that I'm a network engineer with 10+ years of experience--I also work with audio/video equipment as a hobby. I am just now getting a chance to combine the two. I am no rookie by any stretch, especially with the PC side of things.

After three months of troubleshooting, cursing, and staying up late at night, I finally discovered the truth--converting video from analog 8mm (8mm, Hi8, Hi8XR) to the PC, and ultimately to DVD is much easier than it is made out to be. I went down the road of using external devices, one made by Adaptec and the other was a DCS-200 made by Dazzle. After several weeks of research, I discovered that hundreds of people were left stranded with this device because Pinnacle Systems purchased Dazzle and took over the DVC-80 and DVC-150, but not the other products. This left me with no support and a product that only captured sub-par quality and a software app (MovieStar) that couldn't produce more than 3 minutes of video w/o crashing on a very high-performance workstation with a fresh OS installed. Hundreds of people online reported the same symptoms. Circuit City was gracious enough to take the unit back after it was three months old.

After a little research this week, I determined that the best way to convert my old 8mm tapes to DVD might be to get a new Digital8 camcorder that could play the tapes. I was intrigued when I looked at the units that the newer models have USB2.0 outputs as well as FireWire. Working with Sony video equipment for the last 15 years or so, I bought a DCR-TRV350 camcorder. After several hours of tweaking and cursing at the quality, I determined that capturing the video using the USB2.0 port was also marginal quality and many frames were dropped. As I mentioned, there were plenty of system resources (P4-3.0GHz, 1GB RAM, 73GB 10,000rpm SCSI hard drive). My system did not yet have a FireWire port, so I picked up a card today along with an i-Link (Firewire) cable.

The difference was astounding. I was able to play ALL variations of my 8mm tapes and capture the video with Adobe Premiere at 720x480 DV resolution and then transfer it to DVD with minimal (if any) quality loss.

The bottom line here is that if you are wanting to transfer analog 8mm video, only use a capture card or external device if you DO NOT care about the quality. Pick up a Digital8 camcorder that is capable of playing analog 8mm tapes (not all of them do this) and use firewire to capture the video. The TRV350 I bought was just a little over $400--pennies when you consider the amount of time it took for me to come to this conclusion. My first capture with this method was a little less than two hours from a Hi8XR tape. It consumed about 25GB of disk space as an AVI -- converted to MPG for DVD it took about 1/3 of that much.

Other perks: (1) With the camcorder connected via firewire, the software controlled the camcorder functions, i.e. play, stop, rew, etc. (2) I can feed video into this camcorder and it will do a pass-through to the firewire and capture video at this resolution, so it totally replaces any capture device with MUCH better results as far as I'm concerned. It is also not proprietary technology like the Dazzle and many other capture devices are, so I can use it with a multitude of industry standard software packages. If I want to use the cheesy Windows MovieMaker for something quick, it comes right up and works great. If I want to use something powerful, it also fires right up with Adobe Premiere.

Hopefully, this will help those out there trying to do the same thing and keep them from getting misled by making the task more difficult than it is, which is what I did.

[jscompton]

Thank you so much! You cleared up a lot. A friend of mine kept saying he can transfer via 1394 straight from his video camera and I kept saying I couldn't. He has a new digital video camera, mine is not. So, that's the direction I will go. I appreciate your input and will let you know how it goes.

[troyy01]

Yes, please keep me updated on your progress. I'm interested in hearing what other people figure out.

[bibi_kkk]

Hello,

my question:

how do you export from Premiere to DVD without losing picture quality ? (which encoder, bitrate ...)

my story:
about one year ago i searched a way to move my movie / music collection from VHS tapes (PAL) to DVDs.

1. I bought a Pinnacle DCD10 + capture card & a Ricoh DVD writer.

2. Start the capture ... dropped frames (a lot).
I had a VIA chipset motherboard -> i need to change it.
The picture quality of the result (DVD encoded and authored with Pinnacle Studio 8) not great (not even good). My VHS tapes are much much better.

3. I bought a Matrox RT-X 10 Xtra capture/editing card bundled with Adobe Premiere. The capture process is very easy (compared to Pinnacle DC 10) and the result looks good (played directly from the computer via Matrox card to a TV).

After encoding and authoring the DVD i am not totaly satisfied with the result.
Encoding: Ligos MPEG Encoder (from Premiere); constant bitrate 5500.

thank you very much,
bibi

PS: what is deinterlacing ?

[troyy01]

I'm capturing the video using firewire to a raw AVI file (huge files). This ensures the original quality. If you use a capture card or external device, you are almost destined to lost quality (but not necessarily...I suppose some of them are decent). I edit the raw AVI file with Premiere, then export the timeline to another raw AVI file. Use Roxio 6 DVD/CD creator to put the AVI's on DVD. Roxio does the encoding to MPEG2, and ultimately VOB files. Thus, the quality loss is minimal, if any.

[bibi_kkk]

My card also deliver a big AVI file in DV format ( ~13 GB / h ).
I also do the editing in Premiere but i use Premiere to export to mpeg2. My concern was about the export process itself: bitrates, encoder, etc...

How long your program encode and multiplex a DVD with (let's say) 2h of video ?

thank you,
bibi

[ormonde]

"If you use a capture card or external device, you are almost destined to lost quality (but not necessarily...I suppose some of them are decent)"

Adaptec’s OHVibe external capture device is what I have been using lately–encodes directly to high quality Mpeg. For old VHS tapes, it has work great. It has both Firewire and USB II inputs. I personally have not noticed a difference in visual quality between Firewire and USB II, although technical specs seem to show Firewire is the more stable medium.

[troyy01]

I can believe you can probably get decent quality out of a VHS tape because they are very low resolution. . I tried the Adaptec product before the Dazzle and had problems with it...can't remember exactly what, but it seems like it conflicted with some other software I have to have.

[raddad]

I'm just starting to get involved in transferring my video 8 tapes to computer and then to disc to watch on dvd player.I have about 6, 120 minute tapes that I want to transfer.The camcorder is an older sharp that only has regular audio and video outputs.I don't use it any more (haven't used it in about 5yrs) but it still works.Once I transfer them i'll probably never use or need a camcorder.Don't have much interest anymore.
The idea of transfering thru a digital 8 camcorder sounds easier and better than any other way i've looked at.My question is: if instead of playing the tape with the digital 8 camcorder which then converts and sends the digital signal thru I link cable to the computer; can I just use my camcorder and connect to the digital 8 camcorder's audio/video inputs which then converts and sends to computer?
The reason I ask is if maybe I can pick up a cheap camcorder that doesn't play but maybe it will still allow me to pass thru the video to be converted.
I'm looking for the least expensive way as I only have 6 tapes and will probably never do this again.
Your experiences and advice appreciated.

Edit:A couple models i'm looking at are Sony DCR TRV 120 and the DCR TRV 250 Would either of these do what I want?
Mike

[troyy01]

Originally posted by raddad
I'm just starting to get involved in transferring my video 8 tapes to computer and then to disc to watch on dvd player.I have about 6, 120 minute tapes that I want to transfer.The camcorder is an older sharp that only has regular audio and video outputs.I don't use it any more (haven't used it in about 5yrs) but it still works.Once I transfer them i'll probably never use or need a camcorder.Don't have much interest anymore.
The idea of transfering thru a digital 8 camcorder sounds easier and better than any other way i've looked at.My question is: if instead of playing the tape with the digital 8 camcorder which then converts and sends the digital signal thru I link cable to the computer; can I just use my camcorder and connect to the digital 8 camcorder's audio/video inputs which then converts and sends to computer?
The reason I ask is if maybe I can pick up a cheap camcorder that doesn't play but maybe it will still allow me to pass thru the video to be converted.
I'm looking for the least expensive way as I only have 6 tapes and will probably never do this again.
Your experiences and advice appreciated.

Edit:A couple models i'm looking at are Sony DCR TRV 120 and the DCR TRV 250 Would either of these do what I want?
Mike

I do not know about the 120, but the 250 definitely will not do it--been there. I doubt the 120 will, either. The camcorder needs to support pass-through and what I have found is that feature is generally only available on the better camcorders. Mine is a TRV350 and it plays the older tapes and supports pass-through. My advice would be to look at your local pawn shops as well as eBay. Make sure you research the model you are getting because not all of them can play older tapes or support pass-through.

[raddad]

Ok, so if a model says that it has audio/video inputs and an i link output (like the 250 does)that doesn't mean that it supports pass thru?Will it just play the regular tape and output the signal thru the I link cable to the computer though as I don't really need pass thru if it will play the tape.

[troyy01]

Originally posted by raddad
Ok, so if a model says that it has audio/video inputs and an i link output (like the 250 does)that doesn't mean that it supports pass thru?Will it just play the regular tape and output the signal thru the I link cable to the computer though as I don't really need pass thru if it will play the tape.

The camcorder has to specifically say that it will do pass-through and/or play analog 8mm tapes. For example, the TRV 250 has RCA jacks, but they are output only and it will only play Digital8 format tapes. It will not play analog 8mm or Hi8 tapes. However, the TRV 350, which is what I have, has both features.

Here is a good resource that I found a while back:

http://www.cyberscholar.com/sony/resourcecenter.cfm

[raddad]

All of this may be a moot point because I just realized I may not have a good enough computer to do the processing.
I have a P3 866 running win 2000 with 640megs of ram and a couple 80 gig harddrives.Do you think this will cut it?

[okvideoguy]

I see I'm several months late, but I just had to weigh-in to keep people from getting misconceptions..

I also have a Pinnacle DC_10 capture card and have been using Studio 8 on a VIA chipset board, 1gig ram and only a single harddrive (Maxtor EIDE 7200 160gig). I am using 8mm & hi-8 tapes. I am able to capture, edit and render with superb quality and have enjoyed using this system.

My onlyl complaint is that rendering takes over six hours for a 75 minute DVD and my avi (capture) files for this length of video are too large to burn to a DVD and I suppose because they use PCM compression, Premiere can't import them.

Does anyone have a solution to the Premiere issue?

[rsquirell]

Studio8 doesn't give you the option to capture in MPEG2? I thought, after Pinnacle picked up Dazzle, MPEG2 capture was possible (ULead VS does capture in MPEG2). Also....are you sure the audio is PCM and not LinearPCM (LPCM files are huge....and don't transfer easily to other software...but can easily be converted using TMPGenc.)