Lordsmurf, Sanlyn, facp, and all contributors to this thread,

First and foremost, thank you all for your inputs but I don't want to cause a divorce:(

I've shot dozens of Hi-8 tapes with a Sony HandyCam CCD-TRV65; I've shot numerous additional Digital 8 tapes with Sony Digital8 HandyCam DCR TRV-350. Both types of tapes will play in the TRV-350 and there is a choice of S-Video or DV firewire output on the TRV-350.

Based on what I've read so far, it appears as though the optimal flow for the Hi-8 analog tapes is to use the S-Video output through a TBC and an input device such as the ATI600 USB I have already bought here. My understanding is that using the DV output would cause loss of information since an analog to DV conversion is taking place. True, false, or subject to debate?

The question is what to do with the Digital 8 tapes. Since I assume they were recorded digitally, it would appear that the DV output is optimal. In any case, I'm not sure using the S-Video output with a TBC and the ATI600 would provide any improvement over the quality of the output since the source is Digital 8. Am I on track here? I've already done both the Hi-8 and Digital 8 with the DV (firewire) output but could redo if S-Video is the way to go.

PS, I don't really care about the file size. Hard drive space is cheap and I'd rather start with the cleanest file rather than the smallest.

To sum up:

For digital tapes there won't be any increase in quality from converting to analog and capturing via the ATI, transfering over firewire is literally a direct copy of what's stored on the tape.

As for Hi8:
Converting analog to DV does introduce compression artifacts. For NTSC, it's also going to result in a loss of chroma (colour) information due to the DV format only having a colour resolution a quarter of the luma/brightness info. (Wih PAL on the other hand the colour resolution is halved in both directions instead which is somewhat less destructive.) The only possible advantage digitizing via the cameras dv output could have would be that it has direct access to the RF output from the video heads, but I don't think that makes much difference in practice. If the alternative was capturing via a crappy ezcap device or something DV would be better, but if you have a good capture card TBC that would most likely give you a better capture. (Maybe we should try to make a sticky thread with some comparisons?)

In your case, the Sony HandyCam CCD-TRV65 (Not to be confused to the older similarly named CCD-TR65) is a Hi8 XR camera, which has a slightly higher luma resolution than normal Hi8, so if the tapes are shot on that one you may actually get slightly better luma resolution using that one as opposed to the 350. Information about Hi8 XR on the web is very scant though, wikipedia says 10% better luma resolution with no citations, so I don't know how noticable it is.

Interesting information about that specific hi8 camera. Worth noting.

Hodgey, your post is by far the most informative, at least to me. I had figured the Digital8 would probably be best with the DV output since you would otherwise be converting a digital tape to analog S-Video. The only question I really had was what to do with the Hi-8 tapes - use the HandyCam CCD-TRV65 S-Video output or use the HandyCam DCR TRV-350 DV output. Until you mentioned the special characteristics of the TRV65 I didn't think it would make any difference which S-Video was used.

think dubbing the tapes is a good solution. It gives you a digital master tape, and there is no further loss in capturing. You can also hold the disk captured media as a second archive.