"Peter Duck" wrote in message
...
In message
"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 ...



Hi Peter,

I started out with a seperate Creative capture card, which was dire. It
required the graphics card to be set to 256 colour mode for one thing, which
was unacceptable to me. Next I moved onto a WinTV card, which was reasonably
good. Then I bought a secondhand All In Wonder (not Pro) which I was quite
happy with, though it had some annoying bugs.

Now I have a Nvidia Ti4200. It was, I feel, a backwards step from the AIW in
some ways, and the buggy drivers are very sensitive to glitches when
capturing from a VCR, which causes the Macrovision protection to kick in.
However, it does the job, and I find the bundled Intervideo editor easy to
use, though it annoyingly forgets one's preferences every time it closes.

The drawback I have with the Nvidia is that although it allows capture in
resolutions up to and above TV quality, when I do so it gives very poor
results including dropped frames and a 'banding' effect, especially
noticeable on fast action scenes. It looks like the interlaced lines are out
of sync, giving and almost zig zag effect.

My PC is no slouch, a P4 3GHz with 1GB ram and fast hard drives, so I'm at a
loss as to why this happens. I planned on archiving all my camcorder stuff
on DVD, but as I can only capture at lower resolutions, it's a non starter.
I guess I'll wait until I get a DVD recorder!

As for digital camcorders, they are definitely the way to go IMO. The idea
of dumping the data onto the hard drive, editing it then transferring to DVD
with little or no loss in quality definitely appeals to me!

Dave