Digital Camcorders Hi8
whats the difference between digital video and Hi8 camcorders, and whats the best program to edit each with?
Hi 8 is analog. A full video signal is recorded on the tape (2 hours).
Digital is digital. Numbers are recorded on the same tape by the same mechanism (1 hour worth).
Think of the difference between and AUDIO MUSIC CASSETTE and a CD.
No hiss. Better sound quality. More stablity to the program.
Analog Hi 8 delivers 400+ lines of resolution. Digital delivers 500 – 530 lines. The average TV set today can see about 600 lines. HDTV is 1,000+ lines.
Analog superimposes the color over the monochrome picture at 180 angles and reduces the signal from 4 Mhz down to a lot smaller, so it can be packed on to 8mm tape at 2 IPS. In the process of encoding and decoding this signal you get color impurities, cross talk and what is called time base errors. This is where the monochrome image is flopped on the screen and the red and blue colors are not lined up equally for each line and can even shift from frame to frame, causing a shimmy you can see.
Audio generally recorded mono.
Digital records audio in stereo as Dolby, dbx or PCM and it is of CD quality. The picture image is converted to MPEG2 (moving JPEGs) standards and encoded as a YIQ compressed image file. This is what is converted to numbers on your tape, just like MP3 music files or JPEG pictures are stored on your computer.
Upon play back the YIQ image files are converted back to analog TV images just as faithfully as any picture stored on your computer is converted back for viewing. There is virtually no shimmy or time base errors, although there are what can be termed compression ARTIFACTS (blobs of gray ick or hair like pixels in whites, fringes between strong colors such as red and blue, making a little magenta here and there for one or two pixels).
You usually can’t see these artifcats at distances.
When you record something with a Digital camcorder and play it back it looks virtually the same as what you saw on the view screen.
When you play back an analog Hi8 image it starts looking muddy, soft and generated the moment you play it back. It doesn’t look nearly as clear as what you saw on the LCD screen.
As for editing, the same software works for both on a computer, but you will need a capture card for Hi 8, while only a FireWire or USB for digital transfers.
You will be using the composite outs from the Hi 8 (possibly an S-Video out if it is a Sharp or Canon Hi 8). Your capture card then filters out the two colors from the monochrome picture and converts this to either an MPEG2 or AVI file.
In the case of a digital transfer, it is a straight transfer from the camcorder to the hard drive, with no conversions, except for maybe some file type infomration added by the software. It is already in MPEG2 format, which can be edited in most software or easily converted to AVI for editing.
AVI has better compression than MPEG2. MPEG2 is the DVD standard.
AVI files are much larger, about twice or three times the size of MPEG2 files.
AVI files are sharper and have less artifacts.
Microsoft and Apple market some free software for editing and mastering, but you need a Windows XP or Mac OS10 system. Such software has been included for the last year.
You have to have a fast system to transfer and edit. Generally a P3 or P4 Intell, at 1GHz or higher, with an S-ATA, SCSI or ATA100 DMA drive, a fair amount of RAM (256 or better) and lots of hard drive space.
I recomend a dedicated D or E drive with at least 100 GB or a removable drive.
Capture cards for analog are priced from $100 to $4,000 but you can find a lot for under $250 and they include software.
Studio Deluxe is easy to use and comes with Pinnacle and ATI cards.
PRemier is very well liked, but get a full edition (new or old) not a Lite or Demo.
I found Premier and Vegas Video to be harder to work with than Studio Deluxe.
Canon A1 Hi8 camcorder review & footage
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