Best lossless format for storing future editing Mac

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  • jkryan
    Junior Member
    Junior Member
    • Jul 2009
    • 2

    Best lossless format for storing future editing Mac

    Okay, I've searched and don't see a duplicate problem.

    I have a Macbook Pro late 2008, using OS 10.5. I have a Sony DCR-TRV460 with about 50 Hi8 tapes from the first 5 years of my kids' lives. I now want to put all that footage on a large hard disk drive for storage and future editing possibilities, mostly because these tapes are now 10-20 years old, and I just want to get them digitized before they start to have problems, despite storing them properly. I also have a Canopus 110, and an external 1TB drive.

    What I did last night was hook up the Canopus 110 to the external drive, and the drive to my Macbook. I opened iMovie 8, and it immediately came up with an import screen recognizing the Canopus 110 (which perhaps I don't really need as the Sony camera is a digital videocam...but the camera used to record these Hi8 tapes was not, it was an analog Sony...a little confused here).
    Anyway, I tried just using the iMovie's standard capture, and when I looked on the external drive, I saw several files, with extensions I did not recognize. So, I re-captured, and this time changed the format to .avi, and now have a 24GB file for about 6 minutes of footage...good gosh. And, when I view this in Quicktime on my 15" screen, it just looks okay, not great. I wonder what this would look like if I were to edit it, code it into MPEG2, burn it on a DVD, and watch it on my HDTV...my sense is it would suck. I have also heard .avi, while lossless, is not a great format to work with, like importing a 24GB file into Final Cut Express to edit, or perhaps multiple 24GB files, synch problems, etc.

    So, the questions is, in what format should I capture the Hi8 video for storage and future editing?
    Last edited by jkryan; 25 Jul 2009, 11:46 PM.
  • paglamon
    Lord of Digital Video
    Lord of Digital Video
    • Aug 2005
    • 2126

    #2
    Can your digital Sony handycam play the Hi8 tapes ? If it can ,then connect the cam to Mac through a Firewire port and transfer the video as DV-AVI( about 13 GB per hour).
    If it cannot play the Hi8 files then you have 2 options:
    1.Play the video in the analog cam. Connect the analog cam "OUT" to the digital cam "IN". Then connect the digital cam DV out to the Firewire port.
    2.Play the video in the analog cam and capture from the analog cam using a TV-Tuner card.
    Last edited by paglamon; 26 Jul 2009, 03:43 AM.
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    • jkryan
      Junior Member
      Junior Member
      • Jul 2009
      • 2

      #3
      Yes, the video camera does play my Hi8 tapes, so I will go directly through it...and use the DV-AVI format. Thank you very much for the assist!

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