Hi8/Digital8 digital conversion options?
 

Hi everyone!

I found this forum via Reddit. I am currently looking for the best ways and services to transfer Hi-8/Digital 8 cassettes recorded on our old Sony camcorder (1998-2004ish) to a digital format. I was initially looking at purchasing another camcorder as we have not found our old one. However, I also wanted to explore digitizing services for this format due to time, convenience, and expertise being an issue. I searched a bit on here, but found only a few recommendations for tape instead of cassettes.

What current recommendations might you all have for a service that would convert our cassettes? Thank you all for bearing with me on this! Thank you.

For 8/Hi-8 use Hi-8 camcorders. With those Digital 8 what can play 8/Hi-8 you will not get the best result. However it depend on your capture system - it should be good. Digital 8 already is digital, so copy it through i.link (firewire). But keep in mind - you should learn how to clean camcorder heads first (remove head cover, remove and throw out original head cleaner and clean heads with paper or lint free swabs soaked with IPA or ethyl alcohol etc.). If you do not want to learn all that and buy necessary (and expensive) devices, better send your tapes to professional. Owner of this forum lordsmurf can help you.

Some members of this site can transfer these tapes for you such as myself, so feel free to reach out.

And we are currently accepting Hi8/Video8/Digital8 projects. :)

I've sent you a PM.

I've heard a variety of things in terms of what is "best" for Hi8. My understanding is that using the S-Video output of Digital 8 cameras that support Hi8 playback are just as good as Hi8 cameras. The D8 cameras being a later feature set would generally have newer technology in them, but it's unclear how important the quality of the analog playback was for those since they were more focused on the D8 technology.

Theres's also the pro Hi8 decks like the EVO-9850 and EV-S9000 which both have built in TBCs. I've restored a few of both, but I haven't really tested if they are superior to a lower hours Hi8/D8 camcorder when it comes to video reproduction. I will say a D8 camcorder is much less complex and likely to work without heavy restoration/recapping like the two models mentioned there almost always need. Pro decks are almost always "more used" than the average consumer camera, but the pro models do have "Hours Counters" within the menus on them so you can actually determine "how used" they are before choosing one.

Other argument for using a "deck" style player would be that it's probably easier to remove a tape if it happens to get stuck. Pro decks can also play back PCM audio whereas the consumer cameras can't, but odds are your content does not have PCM audio recorded to it if it was made by a consumer camera.

Benefit to using a service would be that they probably have multiple playback decks/cameras, some of which may play back better than others tracking/stabilization-wise.

And remember that some of us have decades of experience at these things. :wink2:

If you ever get into the hobby and see some of what goes into losslessly compressed capture and the difference between it and other methods you’ll understand why there prices are higher. Especially the ones with a ton of experience and gear.

You might as well start by getting a Digital8 camcorder that supports analog Video8/Hi8 playback (not all do -- see the list on Wikipedia). Then Digital8 playback will be as simple (or not!) as DV capture via FireWire, and you can decide for yourself whether the quality of the camcorder's own built-in analog to DV conversion is good enough for you.

I did not tried to capture 8/Hi8 trough Digital8 camcorder s-video output, because I have good Hi8 camcorders with built in TBC what I use for this purpose. But I tried capture through firewire simply to compare how it looks. And difference is huge. So firewire is for Digital 8 and nothing else. Difference is larger than between composite and s-video outputs, what sometimes, with good system, is minimal (however always noticeable). First what can see anyone (if compare) it is colour problem - it looks like dawn in the kingdom of Hades. Colorblind people, on the other hand, will notice the difference in noise level. ;)

The difference has little to do with the DV codec itself and a lot to do with the ancient ADC resides in those digital camcorders, So yes, a modern analog capture device from the S-Video output should produce better results than the internal conversion of the camcorder, its digital processing and the final DV encoding.

Most modern analog video capture devices are junk, using Chinese knockoffs of video ADC chips from the '90s and early 2000s. For example if you buy a brand new Dazzle USB video capture device, it uses a Chinese knockoff of the genuine Philips chip they were using 20+ years ago.

So, yes, I'd trust a Handycam from 2004 more than I'd trust most stuff made in 2024.

It seems to be from a religious rather than a technical point of view.
D8 camcorder 8/Hi8 conversion to DV quality is very bad, but you trust :)

By modern I don't mean chinese junk, decent capture devices from 2010's and onward with good reputation.

It is, I personally had to recapture my entire family tapes that I had previously done with a DV workflow, and it wasn't a camcorder, it was the Edirol VMC-1 which is far superior than a consumer camcorder.

If about modern cards, I have experience with about 3 models of Blackmagic (not loved here) cards and my opinion is - if Blackmagic dealer is your friend, you can buy new Blackmagic Intensity Pro and return for exchange if something is wrong. And it it 50% and even more possibility there will be some problems with analog capture, especially s-video. Problems are minor but different, some may not notice them at all if they don't know where to look. And if Blackmagic dealer is not your friend he will refuse claims, because "card is working" and Blackmagic has no support at all (even for dealers). Their politics is "if it does not work as you wish buy another until you get one that works". Terrible. But if you can test and return card if it is not work as it should you can buy it. Price is good and card is not bad. But they has some problems with new modern computers under Win10 (do not know about 11) - after about 1h capture they loose audio out (I tested 2 cards on 3 PC). Sound is still recorded, bet no monitor output. Maybe some bias settings should be made for that card I do not know. But anyway I use them under Windows 7 and all is fine. Now I have 2 good working cards and 2 are returned to dealer (my friend :)). Avoid Intensity shuttle (USB3) it has a problem with dramatic audio out of sync (no, not because of dropped frames).

How do you know the audio sync issue isn't due to dropped frames? Is the audio ahead of or behind the video? Typically dropped frames will result in audio that is behind the video and it'll get further behind the further you go in the tape.

Audio is behind of video. With analog capture. HDMI is OK. But it start right from beginning. You can eliminate (sometimes) it with PC restart before particular capture, but it is still here. As I wrote above Blackmagic has no support at all, even for dealers. So no answer why. No such problem with Intensity pro PCIe (both - older 2K and present 4K). With Blackmagic is simple - if it works as it should - use it. If not - do not waste time to try to understand why, leave it alone and use another. I do not know, maybe my particular shuttle is defective.

It was dropping frames.

No, total length of audio and video is correct (the same). In theory you can edit it in Adobe Premiere and manually sync audio to video (if you can match :)). But I never did it. When I found (years ago) this problem I simply stopped to use it. Together with Blackmagic dealer we made some tests, did not find an answer why and did not got an answer from Blackmagic support. Then I stopped to waste time to find reason "why" with Blackmagic problems.

That degrades the quality, tossing out ~50% of the color data, and adding blocks. It's far from ideal. DV was never intended to be used as conversion, and the quality of output shows.

Yep.

The choice is that binary.
It's not either
(A) 2020s junk (mostly USB, mostly Chinese)
(B) 1990s junk (ancient compression schemes like DV/MJPEG/etc)

There were several ideal options made between those extremes. Many good capture cards were released in the late 00s especially, during the peak of digital conversion. Namely ATI AIW, but also other ATI, certain Pinnacle (not Dazzle), Matrox, etc.

Video has those. :(

That VMC-1 has interesting uses, but capture isn't one of them.

BM is an HD card that "also does" SD, and quite poorly. It was never made to understand or tolerate lower-quality consumer SD signals, which is a shame. I remember when BM cards were announced (around 2009?), and had high hopes it could be an AIW-killer. It wasn't even close, and was pretty pitiful.

It is, it has to be.

Yep.

That doesn't matter. The audio can just truncate when the video streams ends. Then it would "match". But the video is shorter, for sync to be lose. That means dropped frames, which means lack of frame TBC.

Well, audio delay is about 3-5 sec from start to end within 3h. At start there is only hiss (similar to audio tape hiss), after video start and then audio with delay. And when video stops (after 3h) audio stops the same 3-5 sec later. Hard to imagine this is because of dropping frames.

P.S. It is constant audio delay.