Best Hi8 capture method under $100?
 

Hey! I've been recording on my childhood camera for over 5 years now, its a hi8 handycam by sony, the TRV-418e. Until now, I've been capturing with an EZcap, it gave me great results for the price, and quality, detail didnt matter that much. I know it's one of the worst options, but I just didnt know better. I've recorded with S-video. I have both video8, and hi8 tapes to digitalize, the music video is shot on new video8 tapes now.

Now, I have the opportunity to make a music video with it, and my EZcap died a long time ago, since then, I'm just recording on tapes, but they havent been digitalized. I'd like to get better results now.

Tbh, I don't really know what to do, and what to choose, so I'm asking here, hoping to get some great advise.

My budget for a capture device is around a 100$, I want something that's worth the price and wont break the bank. I don't know, if I should get an EZcap like USB device, a Digital8 camera and record via firewire, or some kind of PCI-e card.

Does S-video give better results generally, than recording via firewire? How could I get the maximum resolution out of the camera, not losing details due to bad capture device? Does loseless really makes a difference to for example recording in 8mbps h.264?

This whole topic is really exisiting for me and confusing at once, but I need a quick, reliable solution, probably something I can get my hands on as of today, without searching for it everywhere, but those options are welcomed too. Any advice is appricated.

While S-Video to a loselss, YUV 4:2:2 colorspace avi file does give better results than a compressed DV encode with a 4:1:1 colorspace. seeing how your budget is super slim here. I personally feel like your best and most easy option would be to get a Digital8 camera that can play back analog tapes, and transfer them to a computer using firewire.

It seems like you're already using a good camera that has a Time Base Corrector built into it, while the best option would be buying a USB capture card and external TBC from lordsmurf. I can already tell those options are seriously out of your range.

Alas, the truth is to get the best results, or I guess not best since that word can be subjective, but rather 'very great' results is to buy a workflow from LS, saves you a lot of time from trying out random gear that would most likely cause problems and use up a lot of time troubleshooting...

Probably not the best guy to give suggestions since I'm rather new to digitizing tapes properly, Lordsmurf himself might chime in at some point, but looking through your post my suggestions given your budget is to either

A. Use a Digital8 camcorder + Firewire (Program of choice can be WinDV)

B. Continue to use the hi8 camcorder + USB capture card such as the io data gv-usb2 (Capture program would be VirtualDub, AmrevTV as a last resort)

Ideally for the USB capture card, you'd stick with a Pinnacle card from Lordsmurf if you'd be willing to spend a tiny bit over $100 for it.

Thanks for the reply! Unfortunetly, I barely find any Digital8 cameras in my country, and also I'd have to buy a firewire PCI-e card aswell.

It's only been a day since digging the articles here, and two budget capture cards came up yet, the Hauppauge USB-Live2 and the io data gv-usb2. Also, I reailised the best would probably be an ATI 600 USB, but as of now, its kinda out of range. Out of the two, which one would you recommend? Or anything else? As I said, I could get kinda great result with an ezcrap, but I have two of them, and the one I bought later is unbeliveble terrible, colors are inaccurate, and washed out, also loses signal pretty often. The first one tho had non of these problems, it just broke:( Would getting any of the aboved mention card get me better results compared to any of the ezcaps out there? Thanks!

I haven't used them both myself, but both should be miles better than an Ezcap, seems like you're already dealing with the trouble they and other cheap cards cause.. I know lollo over on Videohelp.com uses an IO Data gv-usb 2.

Given your tight budget, I personally would say that the IO Data might be your best bet. All I can say is that I hope it, along with VirtualDub, will work well enough with your tapes.

The pinnacle 710 has DV, composite, and Svideo.

The E in that camera part number means they are in PAL land, so DV is 4:2:0 there. PAL is higher resolution to begin with at a tradeoff of a lower frame rate.

In the original poster's case, on a budget, odds are that there are very inexpensive laptops with firewire from the early to mid 2000's that could be obtained at recycling centers or just asking family members if they have any old computers laying around that they don't use. Upgrade to an SSD and install XP and you should be good to go with WinDV. Keep in mind that those ports are sometimes labeled "iLink" and it'll look like the 4 pin firewire port.

....But since you don't already have a D8 camera that can play Hi8 tapes AND because using S-Video output is probably a bit better anyway in terms of color accuracy and can be captured with less compression at the tradeoff of larger files initially. I'd say stick with what you have camera-wise if it plays back well. Keep in mind that you are more likely to run into audio sync issues than the firewire method though since it doesn't sound like you're using a frame TBC.

LS will tell you that certain Pinnacle 710's don't work well, but I'm not sure what the odds are of getting an inferior unit.

Live2 or GV-USB2 I've heard are pretty good options for new devices in terms of quality/consistency. I haven't seen too many direct comparisons between those and the ATI600 to really say much about whether visually one is significantly better though.

You could shoot digitally in 1080 with a normal camera then there are effects packages that make it look like it’s shot in an analog camera. You could mix that to the music and have more control over what kind of effects are happening when. Then if you decided you didn’t want that look you wouldn’t have to reshoot. That will probably actually be under budget. It’s not authentic though.

I think you could go tapeless if you connect the camera to a capture card then to a laptop. I’m not sure about that one though. 100 is really tough to picture working.

You could use a Panasonic es 15 as a pass through to attempt to prevent dropped frames and audio sync issues if you don’t go tape less. The ES-15 has some side affects. Lossless has a good amount of reading too.

You have the advantage of instead of having to deal with crazy levels you can just shoot it well and control the lighting in the video and you won’t have to worry about it much later. Your also working with tapes that are in really good shape.

More than 50% odds for a bad unit for analog capture. I know what to look for, but I still accidentally acquire duds (which is why I don't share my "what to look for", because it's not 100%, there is still gambling involved). But if you just want it for the DV bridge, any are fine, all do that simple function well.

Nope. Very touchy, various issues. Those are just cheap, and on Amazon. That's not what determines quality, as some who often suggest it seem to think.

It is.

If you have a computer with a FireWire port, or an easy way to add one, my recommendation would be a Sony DVMC-DA1 or DVMC-DA2. Yeah, the TBC in it isn't as good as $3000 standalone devices, and the DV codec has its own limitations, but none that will likely be visible when capturing most video shot on consumer-grade VHS, Video8, and Hi8 camcorders. Plus, you just plug it in and it works. No settings to mess with. They typically go for around $50 - $60 on eBay.

Those are not the same.
- camera may contain line TBC
- external/standalone device contain/are frame TBC

You need both.
- line TBC fixes the picture
- frame TBC fixes the signal (and prevents dropped frames, audio sync errors)

Not having both, or having none, is why most capture problems happen.

None of us own TBCs for no reason, "for funsies", as a status synbol, whatever. Those are just the tools needed, like having a shovel to dig a ditch (and not a spoon, not a potato, etc)

Dangit. That is not something I needed to know about haha. I've been fascinated with LANC remote control devices lately (trying to come up with an automation solutions where you could do unattended captures) and I see that one of those models talks about controlling your camcorder with the computer and I see it does it with the LANC protocol..... Probably works just like winDV can control a firewire camera, so I guess it isn't particularly novel, but still interesting to be able to do with a Hi8 camera.

My general experience has been that just about all of the DV conversion chips have some degree of line and frame TBC-like effects. Due to how DV gets encoded, the audio gets tied in every few frames to the video, so you'll never get audio sync issues (like a frame TBC). They'll often cure top of image tearing to some degree as well (so like a line TBC in that way). I'm not sure how prone they actually are to dropping frames since there's never audio sync issues though to clue you in to that happening.

Tradeoff can be possibly somewhat blocky output in low contrast/dark scenes. Color accuracy of some DV converters isn't great, but I'm not sure if that is true of all manufacturers. Like I haven't seen the ADVC-110 put up against a Sony D8->firewire camera passthrough versus say one of these. Guessing since this is the Sony, it'll use the same chip as the camcorders do though and those are some of the ones that aren't particularly color accurate according to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-w26zuJUao

None of them do, either lacking any chip at all to provide it, or containing a crippled/flawed chip (like the Panasonic beta-grade chip at the heart of the ADVC-300). There is definitely zero input frame sync going on in there, either TBC or non-TBC. It doesn't right/correct the signal, it just accepts whatever is given, and clocks sync to itself for digitize.

I just did a random search, and found a 15-year-old thread on the Avid forums (also this thread), similar higher-end discussions. In fact, I think tigas in that thread is/was a member here! Sometimes you need to find older people/discussions, because modern Youtube/Reddit/Twitter is often complete BS devoid of facts. And sadly, common well-known facts in the past, apparently not known now.

Again, not true. The entire fallacy of "DV audio not losing sync" was due to Canopus marketing, and a complete lack of understanding what actual "audio lock" is for the DV specs. For starters, the lock doesn't exist in consumer DV25, only DV50. However, locked audio does not equate to synced audio. Locking audio was for timecodes and external audio.

DV capture is not special, and can (and does!) lose sync. In my hobby days, we'd often see DV-loving morons sing praises about their DV converters, but yet the colors were cooked (contrast hot, tint changes, etc), blocky, and audio would drift. Why? Not using quality VCRs, not using TBCs. DV converters are just capture cards that don't report dropped frames, outputting to a compressed format from the 1990s.

That guys tries (and many of this videos are accurate), but this video is wrong, and his own images/samples betray him.

At time code 4:04 of that video, notice how jagged that Tide logo is. That is very definite DV compression causing it. Textbook 4:1:1. He keeps yammering about brightness, but missed the elephant in the room/video. View that video at normal HDTV sizes, and it's extremely obvious to where half-blind grandmas make comments. That's the damning aspect of 4:1:1 and chunky chroma aliasing.

I commented that on the video.

BTW, I am glad to see that many of the comments on that video are quite good. Lots of people commenting on how analog does indeed get forced through DV compression.

-- merged --

To add, I wrote up a long thread on "audio lock" over at VH about 6 years ago:

Sony, Canopus, DataVideo ... all the DV boxes are the same, when it involves DV25/MiniDV used to "transfer" any sort of analog sources.