Help planning my workflow: 8mm, Hi8, DV, MiniDV, VHS
 

Hi everyone,

I'm working through all the forums and gathering all the knowledge I can. Currently I'm working out my workflow and planning for capturing a lot of home movies.

My goals are to take a bunch of family movies, digitize them in lossless/best quality then edit them, preserve them for the future and finally burn them to DVD with menus to share with the rest of my immediate and extended family.

If this adventure goes well and I'm able to start making it work, I would like to expand to VHS capture and other formats as needed. Eventually, I'd like to offer this as a local (craigslist) type service for friends and family to help them preserve their precious memories and make them easy to share long term. While I realize this is a involved process and I may not have all the hardware and software I need long term I'd love to get this started with as little added expense at least in my short term plans.

Hardware:

Home Built PC:

1. i7 4770K CPU
2. Asus Maximus VI Hero Motherboard
3. 6GB DDR3 Ram
4. Sapphire R9 280X VaporX GPU
5. Intel Software RAID0 Main HDD, Two WD Black HDDs
6. Syba Texas Insturments Chipset Firewire Card
7. Sony DCR-TRV460 DV camcorder
8. Windows 8.1 for OS.

Workflow (So Far) :D

1. WinDV/Scenealyzer to capture the DV footage.

Software

1. Scenealyzer
2. WinDV
3. Gspot Codec Information Appliance
4. Adobe Premiere 11
5. Virtualdub
6. Handbrake
7. VLC

I'm not sure where to proceed next. I've Installed VirtualDub and the Huffyuv filters for lossless editing but haven't used or configured it yet. I also have Adobe Premire Elements 11 installed for using as well.

Current plans and purchases:
I'm going to be adding a couple of SSD's as soon as I can save the money. One as a dedicated boot/primary drive, and a second as a dedicated target for my video capture. I've already got a cheap VHS player for experimenting with and I'm thinking a TBC might be a good investment long term, but I'm kinda putting this together on a shoestring budget and using my general purpose/gaming PC to run the software.

I've also built a local linux server to act as backup and raid storage, but I need to add a bunch of storage space for all the raw video files :D I'm comfortable with multiple Windows OS's and with building and maintaining systems. I'd appreciate any advice and guidance you all can supply, I'm still in the planning stage but I've already captured about 8 tapes so far using WinDV and was pretty impressed with it so far. Thank you all again!

Lightsword

dont use DV for anything other than the mini-dv tapes
DV sucks for analog capture(8mm/hi8/vhs) and no one should be using DV for those especially if there are taking peoples money to do conversions.
also windows 8 sucks for video work
look around this forum and you will see a wealth of info

you will need a time base corrector and a couple good JVC or Panasonic AG-1980 decks for VHS
the DCR-TRV460 cam is good for 8mm/hi8/d8

You can't use Windows 8. Windows 7 is passable, but most all video tools (used for analog sourced videos and DVD production) are made for Windows XP.

DV is a very low quality capture, and the results tend to be "cooked". It especially has color loss in NTSC, beinga meager 4:1:1 colorspace. It's not at all good or professional.

You should really read this: Video Hobby vs. Video Profession, Part 1: What’s the Difference?
And parts 2, 3 and 4.
I actually need to give that a brief update, now that I'm back online.

Handbrake is just a hobby tool, and won't get you very far. Premiere Pro and VirtualDub are useful, but it really depends on what you're doing. Premiere is mostly good for advanced editing or specific restoration tasks, not as a general tool. VirtualDub is mostly useful for lossless source, for advanced restoration.

No, you're not ready yet. :(

Keep reading and asking questions, however, and you may eventually get there.

Thank you guys for the advice. I've taken it to heart and I'm going to refocus my plans on only capturing the Hi8 and DV tapes and see about getting a good VCR, TBC and All In Wonder card in the meantime. Incidentally, I read your series you posted Lord Smurf. It was very helpful.