Topic: Need Help With Hi-8 Tapes

[sec1968]

I bought a Digital 8 DCR-TRV320 new back in 2000, and filmed local and some national acts on it until a tape shortage started happening in 2011, then I jumped to HD. That cam was sitting around until a friend asked to borrow it to convert some tapes. He somehow messed it up and had it cleaned.

I had misplaced some audio recordings and new the video tapes had a source I could use, so I was going to play them back and capture the audio, but those tapes wouldn't play. So I had the camera cleaned again, and against his advice I tried playing one of those tapes in the newly cleaned cam, f'd up again!!

So I started trolling Ebay a couple weeks ago, and pulled the trigger on a Digital 8 DCR-TRV280, using the firewire cable into my XP machine, capturing with Nero 6 to .mpg files.

I went thru quite a few conversions with the new cam, but i'm at a stand still, since I have crappy internet at home to upload to YouTube (the T1 at work does wonders, but not really working at the moment).

Anything you convert from HI 8 isn't gonna be HD quality, but as long as you're happy with how it looks, and you can up it or burn to DVD, it should be fine.

[guitard]

using the firewire cable into my XP machine, capturing with Nero 6 to .mpg files.

You're capturing the video as MPEG?  That means Nero 6 must be encoding on the fly to MPEG.  Normally, you would capture raw standard def video (.avi file) and encode that to MPEG.

[Charlie Miller]

Isn’t mpeg lossy?

[rigpimp]

Isn’t mpeg lossy?

Yes.

[guitard]

Isn’t mpeg lossy?

Yes, but it's the standard format for standard definition DVDs.  As long as you encode the raw video properly and don't stretch it out too far (time-wise), it should look just fine.

My concern with encoding on the fly is that unlike a 2-pass encoding where during the first pass the encoder analyzes the video and then encodes on the second pass thereby allotting the most appropriate bit rate when necessary (high bit rate during active scenes and low bit rate during less active scenes) - the encoder isn't able to do that with a single-pass on-the-fly encoding.  And that can make a huge difference in video quality.

[Charlie Miller]

Isn’t mpeg lossy?

Yes, but it's the standard format for standard definition DVDs.  As long as you encode the raw video properly and don't stretch it out too far (time-wise), it should look just fine.

My concern with encoding on the fly is that unlike a 2-pass encoding where during the first pass the encoder analyzes the video and then encodes on the second pass thereby allotting the most appropriate bit rate when necessary (high bit rate during active scenes and low bit rate during less active scenes) - the encoder isn't able to do that with a single-pass on-the-fly encoding.  And that can make a huge difference in video quality.

I never knew DVD was lossy. Is blu-ray lossy?

[lpmaskman]

Isn’t mpeg lossy?

Yes, but it's the standard format for standard definition DVDs.  As long as you encode the raw video properly and don't stretch it out too far (time-wise), it should look just fine.

My concern with encoding on the fly is that unlike a 2-pass encoding where during the first pass the encoder analyzes the video and then encodes on the second pass thereby allotting the most appropriate bit rate when necessary (high bit rate during active scenes and low bit rate during less active scenes) - the encoder isn't able to do that with a single-pass on-the-fly encoding.  And that can make a huge difference in video quality.

I never knew DVD was lossy. Is blu-ray lossy?

All common video codecs that are used in everyday life (including concert recordings trading, sharing) are all lossy! VCD is MPEG1, DVD is MPEG2, BD is MPEG2/H264/WMV as codecs used for compressing for the video. DV codec that used by miniDV and Digital8 camcorders is another lossy, but less compressed format. Digital tv broadcasts use h264 and MPEG2 codecs which are lossy too. I'm talking about codecs, not containers (such as avi, vob, mpg, mkv, ts, m2ts)!

[Charlie Miller]

Isn’t mpeg lossy?

Yes, but it's the standard format for standard definition DVDs.  As long as you encode the raw video properly and don't stretch it out too far (time-wise), it should look just fine.

My concern with encoding on the fly is that unlike a 2-pass encoding where during the first pass the encoder analyzes the video and then encodes on the second pass thereby allotting the most appropriate bit rate when necessary (high bit rate during active scenes and low bit rate during less active scenes) - the encoder isn't able to do that with a single-pass on-the-fly encoding.  And that can make a huge difference in video quality.

I never knew DVD was lossy. Is blu-ray lossy?

All common video codecs that are used in everyday life (including concert recordings trading, sharing) are all lossy! VCD is MPEG1, DVD is MPEG2, BD is MPEG2/H264/WMV as codecs used for compressing for the video. DV codec that used by miniDV and Digital8 camcorders is another lossy, but less compressed format. Digital tv broadcasts use h264 and MPEG2 codecs which are lossy too. I'm talking about codecs, not containers (such as avi, vob, mpg, mkv, ts, m2ts)!

Thanks for the info. I have watched about 20 minutes of video on youtube over the years, but that's about it. I'm just an audio guy. Don't really care to watch unless I'm there.

[spyder9]

The guy to talk to in regards to Grateful Dead video is Kevin Tobin.  Kevin and myself were founding members of DVDead several years ago and he's still active in transferring tapes.  AMOF, I believe he used my audio for the Fare Thee Well shows.  lol    Any hoot, I have his email address.  PM me if you're interested.

https://www.youtube.com/user/BrokedownHouseProd

[Charlie Miller]

The guy to talk to in regards to Grateful Dead video is Kevin Tobin.  Kevin and myself were founding members of DVDead several years ago and he's still active in transferring tapes.  AMOF, I believe he used my audio for the Fare Thee Well shows.  lol    Any hoot, I have his email address.  PM me if you're interested.

https://www.youtube.com/user/BrokedownHouseProd

kevin and I go way back. great guy, but I can't send these tapes out to anyone. I'm all set now. thanks again.

[u2_fly_2]

There´s also an option to convert the Hi8-cassettes in High Quality AVI = which will be close to Blu-Ray-video files. (90 min. approx = 15-20 GB)

[Charlie Miller]

I sent the tapes to Kevin Tobin last year. we've been releasing them as they're done.

[sabre]

There´s also an option to convert the Hi8-cassettes in High Quality AVI = which will be close to Blu-Ray-video files. (90 min. approx = 15-20 GB)

Well, if you can find a Digital8 camcorder, you can use the firewire output to transfer it to a PC and it will encode the video as DV-AVI (25Mbps) - same bitrate as a miniDV or Digital8 video. This works out to be about 13GB an hour. This video will then need to be re-encoded into a playable (disc or media player) format.

If you don't have a Digial8 camcorder, you can plug your Hi-8 camcorder into an external device like an Canopus/Grass Valley ADVC-110. It will also convert it into the DV-AVI format at 25Mbps.