That sounds like a great idea. I have no experience with digital8. Do they produce compressed output? If so, can I assume the quality of the compression is good? I presume it would be mpeg2. Currently my capture card captures MJPEG which works nicely with Cinelerra.
David > A digital8 camcorder sounds like an excellent idea to me. And not just > because it's convenient. > > > The thing about capturing from a video tape is that the frame rate isn't > as accurate as when the video source is some broadcast station. To make > things even worse, the frame rate tends to wobble if there's some kind > of erasure on the analog tape, so it isn't even stable. > > > Frame grabbers in general (cheap ones in particular) are designed to > capture television, and don't have the necessary mechanism to handle > imperfections in the frame rate. This makes the design simple and cheap: > You have a unit which grabs video frames, another *independent* unit > which captures the audio, and both feeding a third unit, which packs the > data into a video stream. This third unit relies on frames arriving at a > certain rate compared with the rate at which analog samples arrive. The > analog samples rate is derived from a clock created by the frame grabber > itself, and doesn't adapt itself to the video. So as long as the frame > rate is accurate and stable, this works perfectly. > > > But when the frame rate is slightly off, you'll get bad audio sync and > frame drops, or just anything happens. This, in turn, may drive the > video decoder crazy, and things get even more bizarre. > > > That's why the camcorder idea sounds so good to me. You know one thing > for sure about it: It was designed to handle analog tapes. > > > I would even rent one, run through the tapes quickly, and return it. > Even if its video format doesn't work with cinelerra, there will be > plenty of time for transcoding later. > > > Good luck, > > Eli > > Sean M. Pappalardo wrote: > > On 01/13/2011 06:46 AM, David Koski wrote: > >> Anyway, I need to capture 720x480 NTSC using Linux of course. I am > >> trying to > >> archive some old hi-8 tapes so I want to get a good quality. > >> Suggestions > >> would be appreciated. > > > > You'd get excellent quality (as good as the tapes are anyway) if you > > can find a Digital8 camcorder with firewire or USB output. (Most of > > them can play back analog Hi8 tapes, but you'd have to check.) > > > > Sincerely, > > Sean M. Pappalardo _______________________________________________ Cinelerra mailing list [email protected] https://init.linpro.no/mailman/skolelinux.no/listinfo/cinelerra
