Kevin's Watch

What is the best way to get old Hi8 camcorder tapes to DVD? I know there are video cards that can do this (ATI's All in Wonder), but I've read that a better way to do this--in terms of quality--is to use a Digital8 camera, connect it to your Hi8 camera, and then connect the Digital8 via firewire to your computer. Since I want to buy a new camcorder anyway, and don't really want to double up on my video cards, I'm thinking this is the way to go. Anyone have any thoughts?

Digital8 isn't really the standard for digital camcorders, but in terms of quality is can be just as good as miniDV. And Sony is pushing Digital8 into its entry level cameras, so the price will actually be less than a miniDV.

i'm no expert but i went through a similar dilema a couple of years ago.

i used a Canopus ADVC Capture device to capture in DV AVI
then i edited with an NLE...adobe premier i think(if your not using a good editor you might want to render first)
rendered to mpeg-2
authored to dvd using DVD-Lab

if you get stuck i'll be glad to help or want advice on software.good luck.

This interests me because some day, when I upgrade my Windows 98 machine, I'll have enough CPU power to actually think about doing this.

I think there's different answers to the "how to" depending if you want to edit and burn or just copy and burn. I think that there is hardware which goes straight from tape to DVD, isn't there?

The other part of the question is, how to do it without spending major buckage on software ... adobe premiere, for example, probably costs a bit, no?

how do you convert dvd to cd? i'd like to put the Gilmour dvd on cd.

I actually tried copying some videos to my hard drive using my TV tuner card once. The quality wasn't bad but I just couldn't get the audio on to the .avi file. I think now I'd record the sound simultaneously with a separate program, then merge the audio and video tracks using Windows Movie Maker.

A word of warning though, before compressing to .wmv, the video takes up a lot of disk space.

What I'd love to do is put all the music I have on my old casette tapes onto CDs. But I've been told that's not so easy to do. Anyone have any ideas?

Shouldn't be too hard to do. I'd just get a line out on my stereo and put it into the line in socket on my sound card. Record as WAV, compress to mp3 and hey presto!

I'd imagine it would be easier for a mac user, as macs tend to be better for working with audio in general. There might also be an application you could run on the recordings to remove some of the tape hiss.

Yeah, I'll have to see if I can figure out something. Seems to me like it shouldn't be too hard to do, also. I've just been told that it's hard.