BigGrey wrote:
Thank you Mike and Mudge for the ideas. I have been looking for an 8mm player and they are kind of pricey. I would prefer to review them before I have them transfered to DVD. I have quite a bit of footage from Chino and area airshows in the 90's.
Les
I'm pretty good with analog tape to DVD conversions. I've done around a hundred of them for friends and family. I also have professional software, though, so it's pretty easy for me. I would offer to do the job for free, but I'm absolutely swamped with other things in life, including a few video conversion projects for friends, so unfortunately, I can't help you any time in the near future.
But, here is what you want to do in a nutshell. 8mm players/decks or 8mm camcorders are not made anymore by any of the major camcorder manufacturers. What you want is something called Digital 8. Unfortunately, the last company to make any Digital 8 devices was Sony, and they quit making them last year. The advantage to Digital 8 is that it is backwards compatible with both 8mm, and Hi-8 analog tapes. You can put that analog tape in a Digital 8 camcorder or deck and output a "digitized" signal via firewire to your hard drive on your computer. Once the video is "digitized" and captured there on your hard drive, then the hard part is over. From there, you simply edit it on any kind of video editing software. There are tons of free video editing software out there, so it shouldn't be a problem. In fact, you probably have one embedded on your hard drive that came with your computer. If not, there are still plenty of free and very cheap software programs out there.
One caveat, however, not all Digital 8 devices have the digital conversion feature in them to output the newly converted signal via firewire. The vast majority of them, do, however. Since Digital 8 is not sold anymore, I would go to ebay and buy a used Digital 8 camcorder or deck. They are pretty darn cheap now. I've seen them as low as $ 50 U.S. dollars. Make sure that it has "analog to digital pass-through" as well as firewire output capability. Just about all Digital 8 devices have these except the bottom of the line camcorders/decks. Also, get a Sony. They're the best at converting analog tapes to digital signals.
It's really not that hard to convert your own analog videos to DVD, as I taught myself how to do it about 6 years ago. I wouldn't send your tapes to any company that provides this service for a few reasons: 1) It will never look as good as you can do it yourself, mainly because they just don't care, 2) It can be extremely expensive for these conversion services, 3) There is a chance that they can lose or accidentally destroy your priceless irreplaceable videotapes. Trust me, it's much better if you do it yourself. I've converted countless videos in all formats, even VHS to DVD. It's really not that hard, and if you have any semblance of computer knowledge, it's pretty straightforward.
If you need any technical help, feel free to PM me and I can help you out. I also have a ton of links/webpages that have self-help tutorials and guides to help you along the way.
I don't know if any of that made sense, but that's it in a nutshell!
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