Hi-8 Tapes ingest and roundtrip to Avid Media Composer

It works on Mac. Never tried Linux, but it's officially supported.
QTGMC worked 5 years ago: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=190192

It does. I can only confirm for Intel Mac, though, since I didn't have any recent project.

Hey, thanks again for all of the helpful info! We should finally be getting the Digital 8 camcorder this weekend (Sony DCR-RV820) to do the Hi-8 tape capture. Any suggestions on the following when capturing the Hi-8 tapes:

- Which capture software to use (ideally on Mac but PC may be an option)?

On Windows I've seen recommended winDV, Virtual Dub, HDVSplit. I was thinking I'd use BMD Media Express with the project format of 525i59.94 NTS, not sure which "capture file format" to use. Should I use "dropped frame timecode"?

- What specific settings should I use (resolution, frame rate, codec, colour space)? Don't want to mess up and find I have the right camera but wrong capture settings.

Available computers:

- iMac mid-2010 via a Firewire 800 port (read on digitalfaq (iirc) that FW800 isn't good for video capture?)
- M1 Mac Studio / M1 Mac Mini - I purchased the FW800 to TB2 and TB2 to TB3 Apple adapters. Could potentially use that but would rather used the iMac so our edit systems aren't tied up.
- Windows 10 PC - I tested the Apple adapters mentioned above with a miniDV camera (Panasonic PV-G150) and the camera wasn't recognized. I could buy a pcie firewire card.

Thanks!
Adam

Here's another data point.

This was shot ad hoc in 1993 on a Sony Hi8 TRV 200. I did the edit in the same time period with a D-Vision system and exported into a single AVI. Audio recorded with the TRV 200.

Recently, I used the "detect edits" function of Resolve (which worked flawlessly) to create a timeline from the original AVI, enabling me to truncate the awful opening titles and do some much needed CC. I stabilized the opening shot with Resolve, otherwise the original edit survived.

I re-exported from Resolve to an MP4 at the native 720X480, then upscaled to 1280P, de-interlaced and noise-reduced the 2:30 H.265 MP4 with Topaz Video AI.

The results are acceptable, considering the awful original. Interlace artifacts, video noise and dropouts were common throughout the original.

2:30

Cool to see the video from Nepal - I was there in 2019 and recognized some specific spots in Kathmandu. For Hi-8 video shot in '93 I thought your result looked really good.

Thanks Adam. The awful image quality from those early Hi8 cameras was barely compensated for by their flexibility, portability and anonymity.

Barely.

Any suggestions on the following when capturing the Hi-8 tapes:

- Which capture software to use (ideally on Mac but PC may be an option)?

- What specific settings should I use (resolution, frame rate, codec, colour space)? Don't want to mess up and find I have the right camera but wrong capture settings.

Available computers:

- iMac mid-2010 via a Firewire 800 port (read on digitalfaq (iirc) that FW800 isn't good for video capture?)

I'd use that iMac, it should be able to run a system old enough to be compatible with FCP 7. You should be able to find a legal offer with original key and DVDs second-hand and if you don't want to change the system, boot from an external drive.
FW800 is fully compatible with FW400, you just need an adapter or a cable with two different plugs.
Why do I recommend FCP-7 over simple grabbing programs? It can show you the right format and it'll adapt to dropouts during capture, trying to keep sound in sync.
Finally, there's no codec, color, resolution etc. to choose. You will be just copying data in DV format from that camera. DR should be able to read that, at least as .mts or in a .mov container.

There is / use to be free PC tool which does all of it. Don’t remember name
This one looks good: http://www.scenalyzer.com (although this is not the one I mentioned).

Thanks Uli and Andrew for the software suggestions. I'll looking FCP7. In the event I can't get it I found this article: https://leolabs.org/blog/capture-minidv-on-macos that seems to use a command line / ffmpeg method of capture/transfer. The steps seem clear enough. Any reason not to try this method? Also, is BMD Media Express not suitable? Thanks!

We finally got the Digital 8 camcorder (Sony DCR-TVR820) and a friend had a copy of FCP7. The quality difference over the Elgato Video Capture Device is substantial. Not that I wanted to use the Elgato but it certainly helped to justify the cost of the Digital 8 camcorder. Thanks for steering me in that direction - really appreciated!!

Initially, I had a few hiccups capturing in FCP7:

1. Camera connection via FW to FW800 was spotty. I had bought a cheap cable on Amazon and that was a mistake. Bought a Tripp-Lite cable (~$25 CDN) and haven't had a connection issue since switching. Also, had to set the camera menu setting to "DV Out"
2. After capturing a tape I was getting an audio sample rate error that would cause the audio to go out of sync. Fortunately, the camera had a setting for 12-bit and 16-bit audio. Default seems to be 12-bit. Changed to 16-bit and that issue went away.
3. Not surprising but in FCP7 Log and Capture > Capture Setting if the "device control" is set to "Firewire NTSC (or likely any other setting) I can control the camera but when I hit "Capture > Now" I get a message "Waiting for Timecode. Device must be in VTR mode when Device Control is enabled". Changing the "Device Control" to "Non-Controllable device" allows capture (but without device control from FCP7. No biggie).

My capture input setting is set to DV NTSC 48kHz.

Some other suggestions I've seen is to capture video SDI to ProRes 422. I think S-Video out of camera to S-video on a SDI capture device then SDI out to capture card (using a time based corrected). I looked into it and TBCs are hard to come by and expensive. Decks are also expensive. Has anyone had experience with the quality vs firewire capture? Not that I'll go that route but would help to know how much quality is potentially being missed, if any.

Thanks again for all of the help!!

3. Not surprising but in FCP7 Log and Capture > Capture Setting if the "device control" is set to "Firewire NTSC (or likely any other setting) I can control the camera but when I hit "Capture > Now" I get a message "Waiting for Timecode. Device must be in VTR mode when Device Control is enabled". Changing the "Device Control" to "Non-Controllable device" allows capture (but without device control from FCP7. No biggie).

Some other suggestions I've seen is to capture video SDI to ProRes 422. I think S-Video out of camera to S-video on a SDI capture device then SDI out to capture card (using a time based corrected). I looked into it and TBCs are hard to come by and expensive. Decks are also expensive. Has anyone had experience with the quality vs firewire capture? Not that I'll go that route but would help to know how much quality is potentially being missed, if any.

Thanks for the detailed report, should help others.

For device control by FireWire the tape must be paused a few seconds (about three) after the start of TC. So you'll always miss the first few seconds, but audio sync might be better and you'll get informed about dropouts.

The route via S-Video and SDI capture won't yield any better image quality, a TBC might only save footage that can't be grabbed with your approach. If it works for you, you don't need that.

If you plan to try Topaz Video AI, please report. I never tried analog sources, only DV recordings.

Glad to hear that the Digital8 camera is working for you.

I find that anything "modern" cannot readily cope with anything so crude as DV, but I've had consistently flawless results using dvgrab on Linux with a cheapy DV card off Amazon and decent quality cables, on all my DV, DVCAM, and HDV camcorders.

If dvgrab annoys you with its attempts to control the camera you can turn all that off, and if you want to get really barebones about it then the Debian package (also available in Ubuntu) libiec61883 has some example programs "test-dv" and "test-hdv" that will simply grab the raw DV stream that the camera is emitting right now and dump it out to disk. You can also install that and use iec61883 as an "input format" in ffmpeg and do your capture and wrap in one go.

Resolve reads raw unprocessed DV just fine, but you need the paid-for version for the "fancy" deinterlace options.

Thanks, Gordon! Appreciate all of the time you and others took to help me figure this out. Hopefully, this thread will be of help to others in the future. I haven't used Linux or Ubuntu but will refer back here if I do. I think on my PC I'll try winDV or a similar program.

I haven't been able to get FCP7 to capture with deck control (keeps checking for timecode). Hopefully, capturing without deck control isn't introducing issues.