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"Dave D" wrote:

... What about the connectivity issues of a Hi-8 camera in these
days of digital cameras? Assuming I can get it working properly,
what steps (or extra steps) are necessary to getting my final output
fully digital?

I assume that it has some way of feeding a TV or VCR.

On the UK, the lead for this often ends in a pair of 'RCA' plugs, for
sound & vision, with an adaptor ('SCART') that suits European TVs, but
not North American.

With different adaptors, the RCA-plugs can also feed appropriate cards
in a PC, though the video-quality is significantly better if both camera
and card also have S-VHS sockets, linked by a separate cable (sound
still via RCA-plug)

The obvious way is to buy a VIVO card, or a graphics card with VIVO
connectivity (Video In Video Out), connect it to the camera and grab
the video that way, then compress it to a mpg or divx format. However,
having done this myself I have to say the results are rather
disappointing. There's just not enough processing power with the cards
I've used to real time capture decent quality video at TV resolutions.
Maybe someone else can recommend something capable.

I've used both an antique ATI 'All in Wonder' and a relatively new, and
absurdly cheap (30$), 'Comprousa' TV-card: the latter is at least as
good and simpler to use, producing MPEG2 files directly.

MPEG2 isn't 'state of the art', of course, but then neither is Hi-8:
both are of roughly 'VCR-quality' rather than UK (PAL I) TV , which is
rather better than NTSC: my digitised/played-back picture isn't
noticeably worse than that when linking camera to TV direct, so there's
no point in a 'better' card.

A modern digital camera, on the other hand ...

--
Peter Duck