transfer Digital8 to DVD

joejon wrote on 7/26/2004, 9:32 AM

I have a lot of 8mm home video tapes that I would like to get onto DVD. I've done projects with bits of tape and edited in Vegas, but I haven't tried a whole tape for backup. I think the following steps are how I should do it, but like I said this is my first attempt at this. Let me know if this is the correct way to do this.
After capturing in Vegas, add markers for different events or dates taken, then render to .mpg (2). On one disc I would save the clips (.avi) just for backup purposes. Would I use DVDA to save the clips to a DVD disc or how should I do that?
On another disc I would burn the .mpg file so it could be viewed on a DVD player. In DVDA, Open project, choose Single Movie, select the .mpg file, then burn.
I have mainly Digital8 tapes (1 hour of video on a 120 tape), I'm not sure how this corresponds to DVD capacity of 4.7 GB. Can I fit one-1hour tape on a DVD or can it hold two-1hour tapes?
I also have some Hi8 tapes, which my video camera converts when played so that I can capture it to my computer. The Hi8 tapes held 2 hours of video. The question I have is when the Hi8 tapes are converted to digital format, is each tape (originally 2 hours of video) now 4 hours of video because it is now in digital format? I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to transfer these to DVD, if I need one disc per tape or if I'm going to have to put half the tape on one DVD and the other half on another DVD. Then I have to be concerned with where I'm going to split the tape for transfer.
I have a lot of questions. Any that you can help me with is appreciated.

Comments

ScottW wrote on 7/26/2004, 9:51 AM

Time is time. If you have 2 hours of material on a tape, then at the end of the capture process you'll have 2 hours of it on disk.

One hour of material will easily fit on a DVD. 2 hours will also fit, but you'll need to lower your average bit rate for the MPEG to around 4,800 or so; if you have a fancy menu with animated buttons and stuff, you'll need to go even lower with your average bitrate.

In order to save the AVI files for backup purposes on a DVD, you'll need some backup software that can help you do this (basically you'll need something that can span a single file across multiple DVD's, unless you break up the AVI yourself). Nero might have this capability, I've not checked; Nero can certainly handle it if you break up the AVI file yourself. Actually, thinking about it, breaking up the AVI file into 4.37GB chunks would probably be better - that way if you "lose" a DVD in the set, you've only lost part of the material.

1 hour is about 13GB in DV AVI format, so figure 3 DVD's for every hour of video.

--Scott

johnmeyer wrote on 7/26/2004, 11:35 AM

Suggested workflow:

1. Capture one or more tapes, via your DV camcorder, to a big hard disk. Capturing several tapes is preferable, because you can pick "break" points between DVDs or tapes based on the content of your source material rather than simply at arbitrary one hour intervals.

2. Cut, add titles, crossfades, etc. in Vegas, and also add your DVD chapter points, using markers.

3. Render the result to both an MPEG2 file (using the DVD Architect NTSC -- or PAL -- template), and AC3 stereo file (this requires two separate renders, one for the video and one for the audio). If the video is one hour or less in length, set the bitrate for the MPEG2 render to 8,000 kbs, constant bitrate. For 8mm source material, you can "squeeze" more video onto the DVD by lowering the bitrate, as Scott has already pointed out. Generally, I would recommend not going below about 6,000 kbs, although you can sometimes still get pretty good results at lower bitrates. Use this Bitrate Calculator to help decide on the proper bitrate.

3. Backup your source video to DV tape. You could also put the video on DVDs or hard disks, but at 13 Gbytes per hour, that is three DVDs for each hour. Possibly a better way is to buy a bunch of hard disks and use them as permanent storage, You can get almost 10 hours onto a 120 Gbyte drive, and if you shop around you can buy these for about $70, so that comes out to $7/hour, which is not that much more than the cost of DV tape, but obviously they take up more space.

joejon wrote on 7/28/2004, 1:02 PM

Thanks for the specifics on how much a DVD can hold and explaining the different options available. I used to transfer my 8mm tapes to high quality VHS tapes (about $9 each). Even though it will take a lot of DVD's to back up my .avi files, it doesn't seem any more expensive than what I've done in the past. I don't know if there are better brands of DVD's that are more archival than others. The salespeople in the stores don't know much about that when I've asked. The VHS tapes that I did 10 years ago are starting to go bad. The sound and picture are getting a bit fuzzy, so it didn't pay to transfer to VHS.
Thanks again for taking the time to explain the DVD questions. I sent similar questions directly to Sony some time ago (I have a Sony video camera) and they didn't explain any of this; their reply was very generic and vague.