Digitising Hi8 tapes, PAL/NTSC playback issues?
 

Hi all,

I’m trying to digitise my wife’s late father’s Hi8 tapes at as high quality as is possible from my home and I’ve run into a few issues I could use help with:

Format uncertainty: The camera was likely purchased in the US (so NTSC), I belive he used a CCD TR600, but he also lived in New Zealand (PAL is possible).

Gear available:

Mac Studio 2025 (with FireWire + dongles)

Elgato USB capture device

Sony DCR-TRV120E (PAL, with FireWire)

Sony CCD-TR700 (NTSC)

Problems:

About half the tapes will play in both cameras, the other half won’t play in either.

I successfully captured one tape using FireWire + the TRV120E into QuickTime. The quality looks good, but:

The playback is choppier on the Mac than on the camera’s built-in screen.

The audio slowly drifts out of sync until it’s ~5–10 seconds off by the end of a 2-hour tape.

Questions:

Is there a way to fix the choppy playback and audio sync drift?

Is DaVinci Resolve Studio suitable for correcting frame rate issues, de-interlacing, and audio sync, or should I be using something else?

Any tips for figuring out why some tapes don’t play in either deck?

Thanks in advance — I really want to get these tapes digitised properly for my wife.

Having run another tape through both cameras, I've noticed when I play it through the 120E via Firewire to the Mac the audio is pretty staticy and not great quality, however via RCA it comes out clear, any ideas how to fix this?