Transferring 8mm Tape to Digital Video

I just read a great article by Beau Sharbrough on the topic of "Transferring 8mm tape to Digital Video." The article is short on technical mumbo-jumbo and long on "here is how I do it." In short, it is an interesting read.

If you have an interest in transferring videotapes in any format to digital video, take a look at Beau's article at http://ancestry.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=10115

Comments

[Tim]

The article was OK until he started capturing the video, then it went downhill fast. I can't believe someone actually put the idea of capturing in a low quality format and then converting to a higher quality format later into print. NO NO NO. You capture at least at the same quality as the final product; you can always convert down, you can not convert up. And don't capture into MPEG. MPEG is a very lossy format: every other frame is thrown out. And it cannot be edited; it must be converted to a format that can be, each time losing quality. The author's "higher quality" DVD can never look any better than the original capture.

For most people, the standard DV format most video editing software works with will be OK. Don't convert to another format until you are ready for final output, to MPEG2 for DVD, MPEG1 for VCD, MPEG2 for SVCD, MPEG4 for Web, etc.

If you aren't going to (or can't) do it right, take it to someone who has the right equipment. Even Wal Mart's conversion to DVD would be better than the way that author was doing it. They may not be important memories, but if they are worth saving at all, they are worth saving correctly.

[Beau]

As the author of the aforementioned article, I might be inclined to take exception with Tim's taking exception with my comments. Then again, I feel like my article tells people to do what they want and explains why I did what I wanted. Tim's belief that everyone should do it his way, and that everyone should tell everyone to do it his way, reminds me to smile and appreciate the kind of freedoms that our ancestors gave us. Happy 4th!

[Vincent Vizachero]

Of course, if Beau took exception to Tim taking exception to Beu's story then I would have to take exception to Beau taking exception to . . . .

Needless to say, I happen to agree with Tim that the article reference does a disservice to any Ancestry.com reader who, heaven forbid, follows the author's "whatever floats your boat" approach.

Digitizing video is, for most folks, a once-in-a-lifetime undertaking. And, frankly, it doesn't take any more effort to do it well than to do it badly.

On the other hand, many have fought and died to preserve our right to make bad decisions and maybe we owe it to them to do so every once in a while.

[Beau Sharbrough]

Vincent and Tim, and all. Argument isn't my intention here, I hope that a discussion without it is welcome. My point, if I have one, is not to do "whatever floats your boat." My point is that a reasonable tradeoff between storage resources and image quality can be made, where the difference in the quality isn't readily apparent and the savings in disk space is huge. Vincent says it doesn't take any more effort to do it well is true, but it takes a LOT more disk space. His comment that conversion is a once-in-a-lifetime thing is likely true, but not necessarily. It seems possible to me that improvements in digital storage methods might be coming faster than the tapes are deteriorating, and that people will have other choices next year. Perhaps I'd recommend something different to them then. In the meantime, I don't think that choosing not to use 216 megabytes of disk to store each minute of home video is a bad decision. The format names and numbers confuse most people, and a strict admonition to go to one extreme or another often discourages people from doing anything at all. Just my two cents, or if you prefer, an example of the thinking that leads to what some would call a bad decision. And, coincidentally, my last post on the subject.