Vegas Pro and old video transfer

[johnboy 0]

So my copy of Vegas Pro will be arriving any day now, and I've a huge stack of Hi-8 tapes I want to re-import to my computer. My old Pinnacle device just bit the dust, so I'm shopping again. Granted it will never be of the level of quality of a new Sony camera, but anyone have a favorite piece of hardware for importing said video? I'm wondering if there might be some Firewire device I've missed in my searches so I could do this on my laptop. I wouldn't even care so much about these old tapes, but there's a lot of things like bringing my first born home from the hospital, my now deceased grandpa playing with her, etc. Any input would be much appreciated.

[DSE 5]

Canopus makes a great converter, ADS made one, but now discontinued.
There are several cheapies such as those from Pinnacle, but some of them use challenging or weak codecs.
How many tapes is a "pile?" I've got several convergent design boxes (very high end) and could potentially help you out, but Mars isn't on my list of places to send gear.
Otherwise, if quality is important, and you find yourself needing a TBC, I'd recommend the Canopus.

[johnboy 0]

Cool. That's the thing I was looking for. The "pile" is probably a good 40-50 tapes deep and I was hoping to convert and archive them for now for later editing. I appreciate the possible offer of loaner equipment, but I'd be awful nervous about having your toys in the house with my rather spirited children (hence the toasted Pinnacle POS). I get enough other projects that I want to have a good converter anyway.

Now, could you recommend a device for transfering 8mm film? Can it be re-mastered in HD since it's film? Given that its old film, do I care if I can re-master it in HD? I've seen lots of cheapy piece of crap devices for this, and some way-more-than-my-budget devices, too. My wife just inherited about 100 rolls of film from her grandma and really wants to do something with it. As if editing skydiving video didn't get weird enough already.

Thanks for the input, Spot! I'll have to see if FedEx can do interplanetary deliveries yet...

[DSE 5]

There are *so* many ways to Xfer film...and all of them boil down to a camera shooting a screen or scanner plate. I've transfered a few dozen 8, 16mm films by simply putting up a screen that is locked down well, feeding the projector outputs into a direct box.
Direct box (about 20.00 at any music store) then feeds camera. Camera is on heavy-weighted, locked down tripod, and record the screen. HD is a better option, of course. Cheep, effective, and at least 90% of the quality you'll achieve through a high end Xfer house costing big $$, and if it's old 8mm, it'll probably be 100% of what you can expect from a good Xfer post house.

[velocityphoto 0]

I have a sony converter i bought a few years ago , model # (dvmc-da2) .I have not used it forever.I'm not sure if is something that would be of help or not. Let us know spot?

A friend will bail you out of jail , a REAL friend will be sitting next to you in the cell slapping your hand saying "DUDE THAT WAS AWSUM " ................

[DSE 5]

The dvmc-da2 was a very good converter. One of the few that passes CC streams, too.
They were pretty spendy, around 500.00 IIRC.
But yeah, it would work just fine for taking in analog and outputting DV.

[johnboy 0]

It would figure that now that I have Vegas Pro in the mail and I planned on ordering new cameras in a month, that my good PC and laptop both crapped out today. Sigh. Off to order motherboards....

Thanks for the advice on all the transfer devices, btw. My shopping list never seems to shrink.