Question on digitizing Hi8 tapes

[Steve Wolla]

Hi, got a question on digitizing about 30 Hi8 tapes for a client of mine.
Recently picked up a Sony EV S7000 Hi8 deck for playback, so I am all set there. Will be running that thru the Grass Valley converter box into my PC and Premiere Pro CS5.5 for minor editing and output to DVD.

But one question remains, and I do hope this is the best place to ask it; I want to use a higher, archival quality disc to burn the DVD to. Gotta be an 8.5gb dual layer. What have those of you who do this found to work best?

Are there any discs that are both archival quality and inkjet printable?

Thanks in advance,
SW

[Vince Pachiano]

Well it's been 2 days with no replies, so I'll give it a go (or at least bump your thread)
AFAIK, true Archival DVD's only come in single layer.
For Dual Layer, I've always liked the Verbatim 98319 DVD +R DL

Another option would be to burn the Movie to the Verbatim, but also save your ISO or VIDEO_TS files to an external HDD that you then properly archive (2 or more copies, stored in separate locations, etc)

[Steve Wolla]

Hi Vince,
Thank you for the response and recommendation on the Verbatim discs. I will check them out today.
I did think of trying to split each video in half and issue a 2 disc set per tape, but....man that'd be a lot of work, and cost so much that it would not be practical.

[Jim Andrada]

AFAIK there is really no such thing as an archival DVD disk. I know they SAY they're archival, but one of my good friends was the VP in charge of DVD development at one of the major Japanese companies and he told me that some so-called archival disks had failed extended life testing and some non-archival disks had passed - but when they repeated the tests with different disks, they got different results. They finally gave up on trying to demonstrate whether anything really was archival or not in a scientifically reproducible manner

In other words - YMMV. Might be archival, might crap out next week. Only way to know is to burn a few and check back in 20 or 30 years and see if the data is still there. I think the tape may have a better chance of being archival than the DVD. If it were me I'd burn a half dozen disks of each and I'd keep the tapes as well.

[William Hohauser]

Tape may not be as reliable as you may suspect. Between how the tape was made and the availability of working playback units you may not be able to retrieve videotape 20 years from now.

The method I use is to make DVD-Video disks of each tape, either with a DVD recorder or by computer capture, at the highest quailty, and immediately make a DVD copy of that DVD possibly with a different brand. I use Taiyo-Yuden/JVC blanks. The DVD capture quality is better than Hi8 and slightly less than DV tape. If you use computer capture you can also make a backup hard drive which are cheap enough now. An hour at DV quality (which is fine for Hi8 or VHS) is around 12Gb so a 1Tb drive can hold quite a bit. After a few years check the drive and the DVD disks for errors, make new copies as insurance.

[Derek Heeps]

For what it's worth , can I just mention that to capture analogue Hi-8 and Video-8 tapes in the past , I have used a Sony Digital-8 camcorder which plays them back and has a Firewire output , via which the analogue tapes can be played back . I was pleasantly surprised when a friend loaned me his D-8 camcorder , to edit some footage , to discover that it played old analogue tapes I had kicking around .

I have used Firewire to capture into either iMovie or Final Cut Pro . If no editing required , it is possible to capture via Roxio Toast and go straight to DVD .


I would expect PC users will be able to do the same into whatever editing software they have .

This strikes me as the simplest way of doing this , and since Digital-8 camcorders can be picked up for peanuts now that almost nobody wants them , it is probably the cheapest way to do it as well .

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Derek,

Good point, however not all D8 cameras play the 8mm/Hi8 tapes. The higher end ones did, many cheapo units may not, check the specs before purchasing a second-hand unit.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Bruce Dempsey]

the tape it's on now is the best archival media. Leave it on the tape after you digitilize. maybe spool it back and forth every few years to minimize creep
since going digital, Archival is the one thing we don't really have anymore. Call it redundancy instead. Have the stuff you want to keep backed up lotsa ways. DVD disc data is written to a layer of dye sandwiched in there and it will degrade. Double layer (DL) are going to be even more problematic because 2 layers of dye are in there instead of one, Archival DVD disc is a myth imo
I have a bunch of dvd recorders lying around from the old days and firewire out from the camera to firewire in on a hardware dvd recorder will most likely give superior quality and it's super easy as well

[Derek Heeps]

Originally Posted by Jeff Pulera

Hi Derek,

Good point, however not all D8 cameras play the 8mm/Hi8 tapes. The higher end ones did, many cheapo units may not, check the specs before purchasing a second-hand unit.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

Jeff , that's useful to bear in mind . The camcorder I used was a consumer level Sony which didn't appear particularly upmarket . I keep seeing similar looking ones on Gumtree for low asking prices and have meant to pick one up .

I'll be sure to take along an analogue tape and make sure it plays OK .

[Don Palomaki]

Supposedly M-Disc has as close to archival DVD and Blu-ray as anyone has achieved.
I have not yet tried them. http://www.mdisc.com.
The cost a bit more - but may last longer. so the premium may be worth it.
Only a small number of burners support them, but most players should..

Just a thought. Given the slow burn speeds for DL DVD+R, and higher cost of the disk, and the fact that capture of analog tape is at 1x speed anyway, using single layer DVD may not be all that much more expensive.

DV works as a capture format, but may not be an optimum format for extensive color correction and filtering. There are some folks who are obsessive about the process and have very specific recommendations. http://www.digitalfaq.com

For quick jobs I've dumped the analog s-video through a TBC and PROCAMP to a DVD Recorder set to 2-hour mode, which had been "good enough" for the job at hand.

Bottom like is to meet the clients expectations at a cost you can afford.

[Steve Wolla]

Don thanks so much for the link on M Discs. Will have a god look at that today. Only issue would be compatibility and perhaps cost.

I found The Digital FAQ – Video Restoration & Web Development and they have a section devoted to media and what works best based on their member's experiences. They do rate the Verbatim dual layers as their #1. Found that interesting

Got the client the first two to be finished day before yesterday. He loved it and actually wants to raise my fee for doing them! Wow. So the quality of the final product is where it needs to be. But I will be wanting to examine better methods of capture at some point but that's another post.

This is a great thread on archival media. Yeah, my added research indicates the same, that no disc is truly good enough to be called "archival" in nature. Experience shows that relying on hard drive's can also be a risky proposition. Although his data would be backed up on my Raid 5 back-up drive that uses WD enterprise grade drives.....but perhaps recommending to the client that we also burn a copy to tape may be a good way to go.

[J. Stephen McDonald]

I have an EVS-Series 3000 Hi-8 VCR (the previous model to the EV-S7000) and the TBC in it is not nearly as good as the one in my Digital8 GV-D200 mini VTR, that is about 6 years newer. There was a big improvement in such functions during that period of time. The Digital8 VTR plays back my old Hi-8 analog tapes with better quality than I ever saw from any of my camcorders or the EV-S3000 back when they were first recorded.

Of course, the digitizing process when converting them for DVD, would perform a time-base correction. But I don't know if it would do as well if they were coming from a playback machine that had put a previous TBC on them, that wasn't as good? Also, I have a Digital8 camcorder, Model TR-V730, that also plays back analog Hi-8 and 8mm tapes and I assume that the TBC in it is the same as is in the VTR.

[Paul Anderegg]

One thing to know about playing back Hi-8 from a Digital-8 camcorder, is that they will NOT playback PCM encoded audio, such as what you may have on EVW-300 or EVV-1 recorded tapes.

Paul