Converting Hi8 tapes to Digital Media

I have a dozen Hi8 family videos recorded with a Canon A1 Camcorder ( https://global.canon/en/c-museum/product/8mmvc320.html ) that I want to convert to digital with the best quality possible. My camcorder died decades ago, so I need to purchase a Sony Digital 8 camcorder for the restoration. I've searched and searched only came up with a few conversion options.

Option 1 - Purchase a firewire card for my PC and record straight to PC from the Sony camcorder firewire port.
Option 2 - Purchase a Blackmagicdesign Intensity Pro and record from the S-Video port.

Both options are easy enough, though not sure which is better. But then things become complicated when people bring up the issue of TBC. Will that be necessary for both options or just the S-Video option. It doesn't appear that the Intensity Pro has any builtin syncing.. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I'd go for a D-8 camcorder and use a DV card or find an older Mac with FCP 7.
We have transferred many Hi-8 tapes that way flawlessly (if the tape was still good).

Thank you, I'll give it a shot. I need to purchase a firewire card and Sony Digital8 camcorder.

If you use a digital camera to convert hi8 analogue tapes, you are going to be converting the tapes to dv with firewire to the pc. This was the standard practice many years ago. There's better options now but they can be very expensive. So it depends on how much you are willing to spend for the quality. If you want to do it with the best quality, you'll need to buy a time base corrector, intensity shuttle, and possible a teranax to ensure that you can also keep the audio in sync with the video. Analogue to sdi may be necessary depending on the time base corrector you can get. So the answer is if you wish to spend thousands of dollars on equipment for high quality or to get okay results with converting to digital in the digital camera.

hey,

I understand what you're saying about complications with TBC, I gave up trying to convert videos myself and ended up getting them done professionally (with supaphoto if I'm not mistaken) so perhaps that's a potential 3rd option? it'd definitely save you a lot of time and might be worth looking into
hope that helps