Richard Sanchez
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I apologize, you were referring to hi-8 tapes and not 8mm film. In that case, the same rules apply for transferring VHS tapes. Try to find a use hi-8 camera on craigslist or ebay. I recently did this exact project, with VHS and Hi-8 going straight to mini DV, and it went very well.
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Without the players, there’s really nothing you can do by yourself for these videos. Now the issue of working on your videos without compression, that would be an expensive venture especially since your then talking about working on Betacam SP or Digital Betacam. For simplicity’s sake, I just going to say the cost of working with these formats, for your purposes, would be very high and you probably wouldn’t retain enough quality to feel justified in go that route rather than mini dv. If you still want to go uncompressed, at least for the VHS tapes, you should buy an inexpensive vhs player, and you will need to run it through a timebase corrector to maintain the highest quality as you digitize. You will also need an analog capture card to capture your video uncompressed, AJA and Decklink make some very nice ones. Keep in mind uncompressed 8-bit video comes in about a gig a minute, 10-bit video about 1.25 gigs a minute, and you will need a RAID array to be able to capture that video without dropping frames. I’ve pulled it off with a two-way stripe, but for best results you really want at least a four way stripe.
As for your 8mm film, you might want to look for a transfer house that can do that for you. There is a device called the DV8 Sniper, check it out at https://www.moviestuff.tv/8mm_telecine.html That is made to transfer your 8mm footage to mini dv. It will probably be your best bet, since I recently was looking to get some old 8mm footage telecined to betacam, and it was actually more expensive than 35mm since it had to be sent out.
To be perfectly honest, you will probably do fine going straight out to mini dv for your vhs tapes, and using the dv8 sniper for the 8mm. Even though mini dv is compressed, for the sake of family videos it will look quite good, and be much easier to work with since the bandwidth requirements are very low. Also, most mini dv cameras that take a line in (I used a Canon ZR-65) have built-in timebase correction and will transfer from the vhs player nicely.
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First off, be very careful of grey marketers. That seems like a deal that is simply too good to be true. I bought my GL2 used for $1200, it came with a Beachtek XLR Adapter, and a Wide Angle Lens. That was a good deal, the one you’re looking at is too good to be true if you ask me.
I love this camera. I recently bought a spiderbrace shoulder mount, and I use the Beachtek adapter to connect XLR mics, and it does very well for me. I do documentary work, live band coverage, and paranormal investigation and this camera rocks for all those. It’s got good manual control (I wish it had more latitude in it’s iris control), and it doesn’t have a push auto focus (which is handy for band coverage) but aside from that, I love this camera.
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I haven’t used Cleaner for the Mac, but I did use Cleaner XL 1.5 for the PC, and I know they were using the WildFlix codec for flv videos, and I seemed to get great results with that codec, especially at low bit rates. I recently purchased Sorenson Squeeze Power Pack, which encodes FLV videos with the VP6 codec, which is a newer codec and I get much better results. I know that anyway you look at it, that’s going to cost money which your C.O.O probably won’t be thrilled about, but I would highly recommend you encode your flash video with the VP6 codec. You can use Sorenson Squeeze (but you’ll need the Flash plugin, included with the power pack) or you can use Episode to encode Flash videos with VP6.
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The quality isn’t crap, however it is certainly softer than standard 4:3 or using a 16:9 lens. I personally don’t use it, only because if I work on a project that has to be shot 16:9, I try to convince them to budget rental of a 16:9 lens. 16:9 lens can be a little tricky to focus though, and you can’t use the auto focus option with a 16:9 lens.
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I have actually encoded to 400×300 and not noticed an issues with it. I would recommend testing it out on your footage. Also, if you’re concerned with it distorting your picture, encode a video of a circle to see if the frame causes it to become elliptical.
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That is correct. H.264 does work with the MP4 extension.
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H.264 is unique to mov. The closest thing in avi would probably be Divx.
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Just my opinion, since I recently purchased a used GL2. I wouldn’t want to pay $600 to $800 for a camera that requires between $200 to $400 to repair after the fact, even thought I paid more than that combined cost for my working model. I think you’d do better repairing it yourself, and then selling it after the fact. It would make it a more attractive offer.
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Try doing a video mixdown, and making a QT Ref based on that, or export a self contained QT file. Those errors can occur due to a latency while processing the video, and you are right they can be fairly unpredictable.