Copying my 8mm Tapes

[Bobby]

Related to another thread here recently, I have about three shoeboxes (don't you keep your tapes in shoeboxes?) of 8mm tapes. They are about 50-50 split between analog (Hi8) and digital (D8).

I am going to be buying an HV30 soon (B&H price about $770 now) and an thinking about what to do with all the old tapes. Some have been digitized and converted to DVDs, some not yet. My concern is that some day the old Sony 8mm will go to a better place, and I will have nothing to read those old tapes anymore.

One possibility is to copy from 8mm to miniDV. Can I do this by hooking camera to camera via Firewire? I would not think so, but if anybody knows more please let me know. If not, is there a service anyone knows who will do the conversion?

Or should I just make an effort to get what I want from the old 8mm's to DVD and just let them go when it happens?

Ideas appreciated.

Bob

PS In a prior thread, Chuck pointed me towards some nice 8mm storage boxes, but they were too expensive and I never did anything on it - thanks anyhow Chuck!

[Steve Grisetti]

I wonder if our ancestors dealt with problems like this?

Did they have to figure out what to do with all those old VHS tapes when DVDs took over? Or what to do with their LPs with CDs made them virtually obsolete? And what about formats like Beta and 8-track? I guess most people weren't recording to those, so they simply replaced their copies of Sgt. Pepper with the next generation of audio.

Were there people who stored significant and important things on wire recorders or 1 inch video?

I'm sorry, Bob. I know this isn't helping. As someone who's also got 20 years worth of 8mm and Digital8 tapes, I'm just storing my backwards compatible Digital8 camcorder and hoping it will be there and keep working for whenever I need to pull something from an old tape and using my new MiniDV for the newer things I'm shooting.

But just in case anyone out there is laughing at us for investing so much in a format that eventually went away, just be forewarned that it's eventually going to happen to all of us in one form or another. And, aside from hoping we'll be able to pick up an older playback unit on eBay in a pinch, I'm just not sure what the solution is.

[Peru]

Don't forget friends and relatives!
My brother-in-law purchased the same model of 8mm camcorder as I did. His sits in a closet.

If mine fails before I finish capturing all of my old 8mm tapes, I know where to ask for a favor.

[Chuck Engels]

I'm thinking about buying a few Digital 8 camcorders and going into the transfer business

[Bobby]

I did some looking around the 'net and also read my Sony TRV-240 User's manual and it does seem to be that all you have to do to get a full digital copy is to connect two capable devices by Firewire link. There is a very specific illustration in the Sony manual that shows this. There may be some timecode loss or change implications, but I am not worried by that.

I also did some reading on Firewire and it uses a tree topology with dynamic election of the root node. This would imply that it is more of a peer-to-peer architecture than USB, which is definitely master-slave. Given this, connection between two camcorders should work.

Has anyone actually done this and can report?

If so (and it does sound feasible), then it is more of a question as to whether it is a good idea to do it? In my 'net reading, most people seem to say that they are going to just keep their 8mm camcorder around and even if it fails in the future there will always be SOMETHING to buy, perhaps used, that could be used in an emergency.

Chuck: how cheap?

Bob

[Chuck Engels]

In my area the going rate is $25 per tape transferred directly to DVD, most of those are VHS tapes right now.
I would have to do some figuring on what I would charge and what the end format would be, tape, DVD, or external hard drive.

[Bobby]

I took the first step this morning: ordered the HV30 at B&H! I think its going to be a fun summer

Now to find a 4-pin to 4-pin Firewire cable, or 6-pin adapters. I have a lot of cables in my junk box - have to look.

When the new cam gets here, I will try a test and let y'all know!

Bob

[Ronnie]

Hey Bob, congratulations on purchasing your new camcorder. I am real close to buying an HV20 or HV30, but I am just too tight to let go of the money. I figure I will let go of the money pretty soon. In the mean time, I am getting ready for an updated camera and preparing for a D8 failure by putting all my old videos, both Hi 8 and D8, on DVDs as DV-AVI files. I have some concern about how long a DVD will last, but I figure in a few years, I will copy everying over to BD. Then I will have three copies, one on tape, one on DVD, and the third on BD. If the D8 camcorder gives out then, I will put it to rest and be happy with the two optical copies, or make a third optical copy just for insurance. Who know what will come along next, but archiving and protecting is not going to be something we do once and forget it.

[Bobby]

Thanks Ronnie. I think it's going to be a great camera for me, and especially because it is far smaller and lighter than what I have now. But the price wasn't too bad - I got mine at a good dealer (B&H) for $230 less than they were just a couple of weeks ago.

...putting all my old videos, both Hi 8 and D8, on DVDs as DV-AVI files...

I actually did look into that at one point in time. But some of those old analog tapes were 2 hour tapes, and resulting in about 15GB AVI files. That required 4 standard DVDs to hold! Multiplying that by all the tapes I have (and the time spent too) and it was just too much.

But now that external hard drives are so big and cheap, keeping the AVI files on a big external hard drive would be easier. Or when I get a BluRay unit, perhaps I will reconsider writing DVDs.

Bob

[Bobby]

aaarrrrggggghhhhhh!

I can't fault B&H: ordered the camera on Sunday AM online an it WOULD have been in my hands today. Unfortunately it was sent mandatory signature required, nobody was home and all I got was a slip of paper

Well, somebody will be home tomorrow, fer sure.

Bob