Hi,

I am a newbie here, so please excuse some ignorance I may have...

I am trying to convert my Hi-8 home movies with my Sony camcorder (which I believe is an analog machine) to a DVD format so I can edit them and get them on an electronic form. I want to do this myself, but I have not had the time to investigate how to do this, so what better way then to reach out to CD/DVD media experts!!

If you could, please advise me of equipment options I may need to convert these and any other information I may need to do this project.

Thanks in advance!

C.D.

Cheapest, quickest and easiest method is to buy a DVD recorder (set top) with the appropriate input and record directly to DVD. You can later transfer to PC for additional authoring, menus, etc. Consult your camcorder manual for connections to another recorder. Some have firewire, some have S-video, etc.

What is the model number of your camcorder?

My Hi-8 Camcorder is a Sony Handycam Vision CCD-TRV68 NTSC with 460x Digital Zoom.

This camera still works wonderfully and I even hate to give it up, but digital seems the way to go and I will eventually purchase a digital camcorder of some kind.

I purchased some cables to connect from the Sony camera to my Pioneer VCR-DVD Recordable machine at home, but I am afraid that there may be some loss of quality by doing it this way.

I went to my local radio shack and they told me that I cannot connect my Sony camcorder directly to my PC, because there is no USB connection on my camcorder.

Will I need some sort of converter box to help with the picture quality?

Does anyone have any comments, suggestions, any guidance to give me.

I am pretty mechanically inclined, but just don't have the knowledge needed to do this conversion, or at least I think that anyway.

I would really appreciate any help that anyone can give me.

Thanks so much!

C.D.

Yes. And unless you want to spend hundreds of dollars on it the quality will be about the same as a DVD recorder. Here's a pretty good list of various models: http://www.videohelp.com/capturecards?&orderby=Name

There will always be some loss when converting from analogue (your camera) to digital (DVD disc) video. The point is if this is noticeable or not. If the material in the video tapes is valuable to you, you better start by setting your DVD recorder in the best quality recording mode you can get. Usually, for most DVD recorders this fits about one hour per single layer (4.5GB) DVD. In my opinion, you shouldn't put more than two hours of video in such a disk, if quality is important to you.

You should make some tests in various recording modes. Connect your camera to the DVD recorder (have a look at the manual for the proper cables/connections). Then record a test 4-5 minutes video in various modes and check the quality. This should give you an idea

... and welcome to this forum

Thank you for the welcome to the forum and for the information. It will help me to get some of this video onto my DVD.

C.D.

Very true. In fact, one should not expect DVDs sourced from Hi8 tapes to be as good (picture quality-wise) as a DVD sourced from a professionally-produced source. This is because even high-end consumer analog video sources deliver only about 400 lines (this means "TV lines per screen height") of horizontal resolution compared to about 500 lines for a "fullscreen" (4:3 aspect ratio) DVD.

I think the best solution is either a DVD recorder (stnad alone) which is a common find nowadays (I personall own a Lite-on 5005) or one of those fancy new USB VCR's they got (all you will ned is the Hi-8 conversion tape).

Don't expect great or good quality, remember its only going to get as good as the source, but will now be better preserved in a nicer compact style.