Hi8 workflow buying advice, sanity check?
 

Hi everyone. Thank you for a great resource. I've read and searched and still have a few specific questions. Apologies in advance if I missed an answer already out there. I'm probably cross-eyed at this point!

Problem: I have about a dozen hi8 tapes that I'd like to digitize and are high priority. Another nine or so are low priority.

I currently have or have access to the following:
Sony TR 101 w/ SVHS out (but no charger so need to buy replacement for it).
An older G4 733 Mac with FCP 7 (have to check OS)
A current MBP M1 Max
A 2018 Intel Mac
Also have the ability to buy a EVO-9500A

From what I gather, it seems a used laptop with windows 7 might be the more ideal dedicated capture device.

On to my questions:
- Is there any suggested tech for capturing to an older Mac like the G4? Or should I dive into an old windows 7 machine?
- Is the EVO-9500A worth buying and if so, do I need a TBC? So deck>TBC>capture card?
- or should I just go with the TR101 (after buying an AC) or pickup a DCR-TRV840 (or similar recommended hi8 w/TBC and SVHS)
- Should I not overthink this and just hire someone to do transfer this and save my sanity and money?
- Ok one more for fun; if money isn't a huge concern, what system would you set up to preserve the most quality and archive the tapes to digital media?

Hello, welcome. :)

Then let's sure you're doing this in the best possible quality...

"s-video" = separate video, luma and chroma on separate carrier wires
"S-VHS" = Super VHS
It may seem pedantic, but keeping the terms proper will remove confusion.

- CCD-TR101 = no TBC, hard pass, image quality is extremely subpar
- CCD-TRV101 = with line TBC, perfect
Refer to https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vid...-digital8.html

Not ideal. Quality will suffer.
However, it does depend on OS. If you're running Snow Leopard up to 10.14, a specific Tevion "clone" (or ATI 600 USB) works well with VideoGlide software. (And that's a card I have available in the marketplace right now. One of the reasons I have those cards is specifically for legacy Mac users such as yourself.)

Correct.

Nope.
- 90s-00s Macs were all DV-centric (1990s tech), 50% color loss on conversions using that method. Although, depend on OS, there were a few exceptions (ie, specific Tevion)
- 10s-20s Macs mostly had HD cards, like Blackmagic, that "also did SD" quite poorly

No.

Hi8 is a drop-happy format. While many people assume VHS is the worst, it can actually drop vastly less frames. Sony's analog formats were all pretty miserable from frame drops, and thus also audio sync errors. The only way to thwart dropped frames is by using proper frame TBC (or "frame sync TBC", not to be confused with non-TBC frame syncs).

No if TR101, yes to better camcorder with line TBC.

You must be careful here. Lots of services/"professionals" are just low-knowledge goobers using junk once sold at Best Buy and Walmart (and now sold in thrift stores). LegacyBox is a perfect example of what never to, horror stories of ruined videos, as they have non-video-background near-minimum-wage grunt employees. It's churning, not converting.

DIY can initially cost more, as you have to acquire the good gear. But it gives you control over how your tapes are being treated by others, and you can take time to perfect captures as you see fit. Then, when done, you can resell the gear, so essentially it was just a project rental.

Standard setup:
-- Sony Hi8 camcorder, with line TBC -- possibly s-video and stereo audio, which is less important than many would think, for Hi8 camcorder tapes
> specific Cypress/BV frame TBC
> Win7 laptop (not a shiny screen!), ATI 600 USB or certain Pinnacle USB (not Dazzle!)
> optional: to-spec SignVideo proc amp would be excellent, between frame TBC and capture card, to tweak out both gear-based affects and source-based problems

S-Video was literally called "S-VHS" when it was first introduced because that was the first format to have it; Hi8 and ED-Beta came later. Just like electricians still calling U.S. household voltage "110" even a century after 120 volts became the norm, for old pros, the name stuck.

I've never had any dropped frames when using a Digital8 camcorder to play back / digitize Video8 and Hi8 tapes, and the color resolution of these formats is limited enough that the "DV nasties" aren't going to have any negative effect, especially on material that was recorded on consumer equipment using a single-chip CCD sensor.

In fact, as shown in my "USB video capture devices all suck" video, DV transfer actually recovers more detail from the shadows, while USB devices tend to crush it to black. (The PLUGE pulse on SMPTE color bars gets obliterated to RGB 0/0/0.)

Just don't use Sony's "Digital NR" as that causes very noticeable image/color trailing artifacts.

Thank you for all the great info. Yeah...it's the old TR101 so I'll look for something on the list. Just curious why you don't feel the deck is worth it. Just bang for the buck?

I watched your video and -- ugh -- that same Sony box was stolen from me years ago and your video just made me curse them. It's been over ten years haha.

You and I are old enough to remember this, and I never encountered that until the 2000s. It was always s-video, never S-VHS. S-VHS was always a tape, s-video was always the wire, at any small studio I was in. Everything was "coax", s-video, "RCA" for wires. Do you remember the "RF input" or "RF box" on the back of TVs? Those were the units that had the twin leads that converted to coax.

This is often stated, but also equally often proven very wrong. 4:1:1 color loss is real and obvious.

That has nothing to do with DV or USB, and everything to do with the devices themselves.

Funnily enough S-Video first existed in 1979 on the Atari 800, before S-VHS was even a thing.

Anyway when it comes to "DV brings out more details in the shadows" that's just because by default some of these USB cards crush the blacks and clip the whites, adjusting the card's brightness and contrast controls can fix that, you'd either use a histogram and/or your own eyes as reference.

Like with the Pinnacles, their range is 16-235. By default blacks are very much crushed, but I'm able to recover detail in the blacks and whites (more so blacks) by adjusting the brightness to a positive value and the contrast to a negative value. (For me personally, that is +10 brightness and -18 contrast)

I might decide to crush them back down to PC monitor range (0-255) for a delivery copy, but I have it so that the missing information is being preserved properly in the raw capture file.

Still have a copy of old 2024 captures that have crushed blacks especially since this was before I bothered to adjust my card's proc amp controls.

Just redid a tape I previously captured so I might send a comparison, with the contrast intentionally boosted in post production to highlight the differences.

I've never liked the term "crushed", in relation to 16-235, as that puts a negative connotation on the card.

16-235 is the legal range.
- illegal levels can either be manually adjusted legal (ie, proc amp)
- or simply have all 0-15 recorded as 16, all all 236-255 recorded as 235; aka, the "crushing"

Sources can be at fault, or tapes, or VCRs, or other devices (DVD recorders, TBCs, whatever).

Analog video was not precise, but digital is precise. Slop and inaccuracy must be given values, and those may or may not align withing analog norms.

AIW AIW can capture illegal levels (and is one of the few that can), but then the output is still illegal. It must be addresses in the post-capture workflow, otherwise it displays quite ugly on the D>A process for TV viewing.

DV is really nothing special here. It can, and does, legalize like anything else. If anything, the reduced color palette tends to shift darks muddy, which can give the mere appearance of "not crushed". Whether or not details are lost, or not lost, is still very dependent on the DV devices/box/card/camcorder, specifically the codecs therein (like Canon DiGiC).

And everything I just stated aligns with what you described, just with different words, jargon-filled sentences. :salute:

Yeah, 16-235 is the card's legal limits, everything outside of that is illegal and therefore automatically thrown away (becomes solid black and solid white). I need to adjust the proc amp so I can capture that additional detail, by making sure everything is being captured within the card's legal limits.

This is a pretty good example on the missing black information I was able to recover all by changing the card's proc amp from their default values. I do use an external TBC that helps with keeping the whites less clipped (by default the contrast is lowered (like lowering it to 87% or so in VDub) in comparison to not using it) but that on it's own does not change the black levels nor fully fixes the whites from being clipped.

Contrast was boosted in post to easily highlight the differences.