[garys314]

I am looking to archive my standard 8mm tape to hard drive. My 8mm camera does not have firewire. My pc is on the slow side and does not have a firewire connection. I am looking for some base configurations that would work for someone on a tight budget.

Thanks in Advance,

Gary

[rickyt]

If your camera has Audio/Video out phono's to enable you to output the camcorder to a TV or video ,you could buy a cheap TV card for your PC .That's what I use to input composite signals from VHS/V2000 tapes to transfer to PC .For a direct link from my Panasonic camcorder I use firewire ,much faster and better picture quality , naturally .I know there are special boxes to buy that will link older camcorder/vcr's to the PC using Firewire or USB ,but some ar'nt cheap .I haven't used such devices ,so I cannot comment . My trusty TV card does the job using Pinnacle 9 as capture software.

[garys314]

Would i be better off buying a camcorder with firewire?

[redsox_mark]

Buying a new camcorder will be more expensive than the TV card option... but then you'll have a new camcorder to use in future. If you get one with AV in (and AV to DV conversion) then you could use the new camcorder to convert your 8mm to digital (DV) format. The Canon MV960 is one of the cheaper ones with this function.

[garys314]

Thanks, I will take a look at prices.

[senu]

Originally Posted by garys314

Would i be better off buying a camcorder with firewire?

Yes ultimately for digital. If you get one with analogue-in, you could copy your 8mm tapes to that and : Hey Presto: 8mm is now DV!

But for transfer of 8mm footage without immediately purchasing a new camcorder, you could:
Borrow a
1)Sony Digital 8 camcrder with firewire which will play 8 mm and convert it to
digital and transfer to PC via firewire in one go ( 8mm D8 camcorders are getting scarce)

2) DV camcorder which has analogue in ( and DV out) and can take the analogue input from 8mm, simultaneously convert this and transfer via firewire to PC without first recording to tape , a process called "pass thru"

Or purchase
3)A PCI ( or USB) TV card £45 upwards which can take analogue inputs such as your 8 mm camcorder outputs and digitise it for use on the PC
or
4)A device like this one ( I saw one in PC World for around £45 a few days ago)

Finnally you could "loan" or even buy a settop DVD recorder and turn your analogue 8mm foootage to DVD. The resulting digitised mpeg2 on such DVD can then be copied off and edited on the PC.

There are obviously other solutions but the ones above are taking the need to spend the least and also bear in mind your PC may not be "all singing and dancing"
Notwithstanding that For digital video footage ( which your 8mm footage becomes on PC) , a bit of grunt and a lot of HDD space cannot be avoided
HTH:

[garys314]

Senu,

Thanks for the super answer. I own a liteon dvd recorder. I spent good amount of time copying it to dvd then to hard drive. I was not comfortable with the process, it was a bit flakey if you ask me. Yesterday i went to play one of the dvd's that i recorded from 8mm and it was useless. That led me to believe that going from 8mm to dvd to hard drive might not be a good idea. I am going to look at some of the cards that you reccomended.

Gary

[senu]

Hmm.. The DVD recorders do vary in quality though, thier built in mpeg encoding vary from awful to great.

Just to mention , For archiving, some still rate tape over HDD.

However, as you already have your 8mm tapes that doesnt matter:

The Dazzle devices ( I linked) along with their sofware can capture you footage as DIVX, mpeg1 or 2 which are small size but good quality video files
A 250Gb external drive = £60 ( plenty of space) so you are on the right track