[Rodney Clarke]

Final Cut said I could use capture now but there was no response.Perhaps I should have waited a bit? FC looked as if it knew there was something there.I will go back through my settings. The initiallising device band came up but did not move. I would have thought that a Sony firewire camera should have worked.Must be me.
I think my big Hi8 deck is getting too worn now but the picture does look marginally sharper played on this than in the Digital8 analogue/DV conversion camera.Tracking is an issue on my old deck and perhaps I should consider a more modern Hi8 player.

Rod

[Rodney Clarke]

Thanks Kevin for your response…..a year and many letters later!
I was not sure if anyone would see this.

I think I am making some progress second time round.I dragged out my Sony EVO 9850P and apart from being a bit smelly it worked.I linked this to a little Sony DCR TRV460E handycam for the digital transfer.Sadly I can’t get Final Cut to respond to the handycam even via Firewire for some reason,perhaps too old now. I will copy the tapes to a small DVCAM deck first. I bought the Hi8 deck second hand without a manual and cannot find any reference to Tracking switching. The menu button doesn’t seem to do anything.

I had to laugh at your comment about your tape quality.Some of my 8mm film is excruciatingly bad to watch.I am going to have to rely on Final Cut to make it watchable!

Rod Clarke
Sydney

[Rodney Clarke]

To Kevin Patrick,
Sorry for the delay.I have been looking at Sony Hi8 digital 8 players and your article came up. Like you I have miles of Hi8 video to transfer to digital + 8mm/16mm film. Did your machine (GV-D800 or similar)do a transfer from Hi8 to digital without producing pixelation? I have transfered many Hi8 tapes using a little digital8 camera which converted to digital but unfortunately produced some sort of pixel oscilation,perhaps due to different field scanning. I did have a professional Hi8 deck but would not play some of the Hi8 tapes which sadly became problematical to play…and had no firewire.They became sticky to my horror. The little digital camera was the only machine which would even attemprt to play these tapes.At the time I was unaware of the Hi8/digital deck.I would love to overcome the pixelation/noise issue.

Another question which may not have an answer is the possibility of correcting the Hi8 colour shift on playback?

Rod Clarke
Scenografic Studio
Sydney.