As perfect as 8mm tapes were for the portability of smaller camcorders and more accessible home video-making in the 1980s, these old video tapes were not designed to last forever. If your 8mm or Hi8 camcorder has the standard audio/video input jacks, you can use standard A/V cables for the connection. If not, you may need a mini A/V output jack or S-Video output connector depending on your camcorder make. You can easily get them to work with your computer with the supplied driver.
Camcorders That Use MiniDVD Discs
While you can try to store these tapes as carefully as possible to make them last longer, the 8mm magnetic tape will eventually degrade so much that your videos will become unwatchable. Legacybox has perfected the art of digitizing aging, old analog media to digital. Every item you send is barcoded and tracked throughout the entire digitizing process. Log in to track your order at any time, plus receive up to 12 emailed updates. We send you a box to fill with your home movies, photos, and film. Send your Legacybox, filled with old home movies and pictures.
Analog Video Capture Device
Read more about video 8 to digital here.
However, at-home video tape transfer can have its advantages and disadvantages. Like so many media formats in a rapidly advancing world of technology, 8mm video has become nearly obsolete. This makes watching the content stored on those tapes almost impossible. From the above guide you can see that it’s not really difficut to convert 8mm to DVD yourself. Once you get started, you’ll familiarise yourself with the process. However, if you’ve a bunch of tapes, accumulated over the decades to convert, then the cost might be prohibitive.
Convert Hi8 Tapes to Digital or DVD
The only downside to capturing digital video is that it uses more space as there’s more information to get captured. Each 1 hour tape can use about 11 GB of storage on your hard drive. But you can use editing or conversion software to reduce this storage space used after the video has capture. There are two types of analog video capture devices – internal and external.
With alternatives dwindling, the best way to preserve old camcorder videos, exclusive of having it done professionally, is enlisting the aid of your PC. Note both the minimum and recommended system requirements indicated by the software. If your PC only meets the minimum requirements, it might not be enough for smooth video transfer. The upload quality depends on how much RAM is on your PC, the processor, and the hard drive speed. Select Import or Start Recording on the capture software and press PLAY on the camcorder. Do it yourself.All you’ll need is a scanner—a feature built into many home printers these days. Bear in mind that it does take time and patience to scan one photo at a time.
Unless you have the equipment just sitting in your basement, it makes better sense to let the Hi8 to digital service professionals handle the job. The best way to convert 8mm tapes to DVD is to use an online service like ours.
DVD discs are a format that still can be played on most modern DVD players and computers. Can be complex for those who are not tech-savvy, leading to frustration and delays in the process. Stick around and find out which solution works best for you and what you need to know. For a simple overview of the methods, see the table of contents.
Open the video capture or video editing software you want to use. When transferring video recorded on tape, uploading is in real time.
Also, Mini DV is among the last released videotapes before the start of digital video recordings stored on the external and internal memory. So if you were thinking of converting tapes to digital, don’t worry because there are plenty of solutions available. Searching for the best video transfer service near you can be difficult.
Click here for a full list of Digital8 camcorders with Hi8 playback capability. Begin importing the video with the video capture software. The computer must have compatible video capture software installed, such as iMovie®.