Keeping Hi8/MiniDV tapes after digital transfer?

[cyoung2026]

Ten years ago, I took two containers of old Hi-8 and MiniDV camcorder tapes to a media professional in the area to have them converted, as I was aware the tape medium would eventually deteriorate and I wanted the memories preserved. At the time it was quite expensive and took several months, but the individual created 120 DVDs and provided a Western Digital 3TB MyBook which contained the AVI files, as at the time I was utilizing an HP laptop. The quality of the DVDs is surprisingly good, and I kept the WD drive as backup but never viewed the files.

This past year I came across the two containers of the old tapes and the WD drive. Having recently purchased a new MacBook Pro, I attempted to view the files, which I learned were not compatible with the Apple platform and would require another program to access. As I researched more into file types, I learned I could use a program to convert the AVI files to MOV, so I could view them on my Mac. I purchased EaseFab software and after a lengthy conversion process, have MOV files which look great. I also kept all the original AVI files as I read, they were of slightly higher quality than MOV.

My question is should I continue to keep the original Hi-8 and MiniDV tapes, for the potential to have them re-transferred using updated technology? Given the age of the tapes, 10-30 years old, I can’t imagine the quality of transfer would be substantially improved over what I’m seeing with the current three media formats. My wife and I are making every attempt to declutter and become more organized as we move into retirement in the years ahead. Over the past several years I have made the effort to have all old film negatives and photo albums digitally transferred and continually review photo files to create folders and delete images that are of poor quality, redundant, or uninteresting. We have one daughter and we want to make things as simple and accessible for her to be able to keep and view family photos and videos in the future. My plan is to upload all to a cloud-based service once I have cleaned-up and organized each media type, just as a back-up for when an external drive potentially fails.

Any feedback is much appreciated!

[dpalomaki]

If quality tape was used and stored reasonably properly (avoiding extremes of temperature, humidity, physical abuse) tape will last a long time. (I have 45+ year old VHS home recordings on RCA-branded tape that play fine) The larger problem may well be finding playback gear. (E.g., how many current PC can play a MFM hard drive or ZIP disc?) It makes sense to me to save the important tapes (Hi8 and MiniDV media is not bulky compared to VHS and BETA). CD-R and DVD-R media (especially earlier and brand-x stock) often had shorter reliable storage life than quality tape.

There is no way to evaluate current vs future transfer quality potential without examining what you already have both on tape and in digital form. Gear and software used and the skill of the transfer service are major factors. File names (AVI and MOV) can contain varying quality based on the digitizing parameters used (bit rate, bit depth, etc) as well as the capability of the software used to digitize the video.

In any case it may be important as well to maintain backups of your digitized files, and periodically check your backs up for condition/errors. And you may find it worth converting storage formats to more widely supported formats for future playback. Keep your important originals in proper storage and use copies for routine playback.

[cyoung2026]

Thanks for your response!

[latreche34]

Hi8 is an analog format, miniDV is digital, so not the same rules apply here, While Hi8 can benefit from future capture technologies (although development is very slow and results are not yet promising), miniDV is a one time transfer if done right, The resulting DV files will be identical to the original contents on the tape, keeping the tapes will not improve the quality, it just secures the contents.

Your conversion of the original DV files to mov is not because the DV codec is obsolete, it is because you limited yourself to mac which is a closed system, You can free yourself and adopt the PC environment. I have D8 transfers that I did 18 years ago and they play fine in my Win11 machine.

[cyoung2026]

Thanks for the additional insight into the formats. The gentleman who completed the transfer initially is a retired Navy electrical engineer, who created a successful second career working with A/V media. His home studio was impressive and the time and care he took in working with my files, such as labeling each DVD with the date, led me to believe he was doing the best work possible given the constraints of the current technology.

I realize storing two containers of camcorder tapes doesn't seem like much of an inconvenience, however, I wanted to confirm it was necessary given my efforts to streamline all of our media types to make easy access someday for our daughter.

[dpalomaki]

Quote:

I realize storing two containers of camcorder tapes doesn't seem like much of an inconvenience, ...

It is more akin to insurance against loss or corruption of your digital files.

Administrative care (e.g., good labeling and logging) is not assurance of a competent transfer to digital format of the Hi8 material but it does imply some care in the process. The real issue is are you and your daughter happy with the results you received. Does she have a real interest in trying to improving the files at some time in the future? As in the past that would be a real investment in time (and money), and might apply to only a few tapes/

The MiniDV tapes could (should) have been copied to DV-format AVI files, a loss-less process from the tape. Or they might have been converted to some other encoding format in the AVI file for storage on the disc. That would depend on the process used. As a quick check a 60 minute MiniDV video tape will run about 13 GB as a DV AVI file. Less that that implies some other encoding/compression scheme was used - and likely losses. DVD video uses a different compression scheme and a 5 GB (4.7 GB actually) DVD, at highest quality safe data rates, can hold roughly 80 minutes of video.

For the Hi8 material you can get an indication of the original capture quality limitation from the file sizes - how large a file for 1 hour of video. But again the real issue is are you and your daughter happy with the result, or do you want to invest in the possibility of an improved capture, editing, and color/image correction.

My observation over the years is many "younger" people have limited current interest in old photos and home video. OF 120 home video DVDs maybe 12 would be of real interest. But your case may be different.

[BmacSWA]

It's just my 2 cents, but I NEVER ditch original media. You never know when a new process or workflow will produce better results. THEN you can recapture in a better format years down the road for better videos like I currently am!

[vwestlife]

FYI, both AVI and MOV are container formats. Either of them can contain a multitude of different codecs and either compressed or lossless video and audio. Normally, QuickTime on a Mac has no problem opening and playing AVI files, and if you choose File / Save As it will losslessly rewrap them into MOV files. If it can't play the AVI files that were provided, then maybe the transfer process used some codec that is not natively supported on either a Mac or a Windows PC unless you install the codec for it, like Lagarith or UTVideo. MediaInfo (free download) will tell you for sure exactly what the files contains.

p.s. DV video on a Mac is not normally wrapped into MOV files. It is stored as .DV files.