Digitize Hi8 tapes: AGP vs PCIe AIW?
 

Looking to digitize about 20 old Hi8 tapes, from a sony camcorder. I have read some threads on here that say the AGP AIW cards are the best.

I have 2 questions:

What is wrong with with PCIe AIW cards?

What am I giving up if I decide to use a digital8+firewire setup (no analog capture card needed...)

thanks!

Welcome back. :)

Digital8 is DV on 8mm tape.
- DV loses 50%+ of the color data.
- DV alters the tints/shadese of colors. ("Why does grandma have a sunburn at Christmas?")
- DV adds blocks.

PCIe AIW cards
- have awful integrated audio
- have justified image offset, and some aspect issues
- cannot be used for MPEG (not as much as issue now, as it was 15+ years ago)

AIW AGP are some of the best, yes, WinXP required.

Remember that capturing is about more than the capture card. The capture card alone cannot give you quality conversions. You need quality VCR, and some form of TBC.

VCR > TBC > capture card

Ideally
JVC/Panasonic S-VHS VCR with line TBC
> Cypress/DataVideo type frame TBC
> ATI AIW capture card

There are some ways to cut corners, thus cut costs, though at sacrifice of quality.

None of this is some 1% loss/gain, but 25/50/75/100% loss/gain. Something that a half-blind grandma will notice.

Jumping in here, also having agreed to the task to digitize the 90's family tapes "some day". I have a Panasonic NV-HS860, and a pretty good XP media machine-- so getting an ATI AIW (not familiar with these) would yield a lot better results than just going through one of my Sony Digital8 camcorders over firewire then?

Do I still need/want a VCR and TBC device if I use the S-Video output of a Sony Hi8 or Digital8 Camcorder that has TBC?

s-video (or composite) has nothing to do with needing a TBC.
Crass analogy time! It's like asking if you still need to wash your hands after you wiped your butt (as TBCs are essentially for signal/image cleaning, to allow digital transfer), because you upgraded to two-ply (s-video) instead of 1-ply (composite).

- VCRs are for VHS. (Not going into rare exceptions here.)
- Hi8 camcorders are for Hi8, and Video8 (quality of Hi8 camcordes better than Video8 camcorder)
- Digital8 camcorders are for Digital8 -- it generally degrades the quality of Hi8/V8, as most shove the video though lossy DV encoding before output.

Some Digital8 cameras allow analog tape playback, many do not. Those that do generally have line TBCs, but not always, read the manual. Even with line TBC (intraframe corrections, clean the image), that does not for the interframe/temporal (cleaning the signal). For that, you need frame TBC, or at worst wimply non-TBC frame sync (which has a fail rate, but that number might be low in this specific case).

- You must have the proper play/camera for the tape.
- You must have some form of TBC, either budget (even problematic) weaker version, or the trouble-free (nuisance free, stress-free) ideal Cypress/DataVideo type.
- You must have a quality capture card.

When it comes to the AIW PCIe, you could easily do worse. The problems it has are way less bad than what (mostly USB) junk like Elgato or Easycap would give you. Or ancient PCI cards that you rarely read about anymore (cheap BT8x8/CX chip cards, faulty MPEG cards, etc).

But if you don't have it already, and can use something else, do so. AIW AGP is an upgrade, even if olrder. There are a few rare USB and PCI AIW (which I sometimes have in the marketplace).

The biggest issue with AIW cards is they must be complete, and with the correct cables. Almost eveyrthing you see on eBay is incomplete, junk, or both. So be ware of that. Never assume that an item claiming to be complete, or even tested, is actually complete or tested, as most are not. Yes, sellers like, often, sadly. You're not a customers/buyer, you're their mark.

With only 20 tapes, assuming you're trying to be cheap about it (though you only punish yourself), one possible method is
> a Hi8 camera (without TBC fine),
> ES/15 as strong+crippled line TBC(ish) with non-TBC frame sync (noting it messes with image quality some)
> ended with the AIW capture card.

Better is still Hi8 camera with line TBC, frame TBC, AIW capture card.

Remember: buy it, use it, resell it. Quality gear holds value, junk is yours forever.