Transferring an old 8mm tape to CD will eliminate quality degradation from the constant wear of use on the tape's magnetic strips.
When home recording technology shifted over to tape systems, it provided a cheaper method for capturing moving pictures in a sturdier package. Then 8mm tape became available and the medium became more compact. But all tape formats degrade with use as the tape wears down during video playback. Converting to a digital format such as compact disc eliminates quality degradation from playback. The conversion can be done with an analog video capture card and video editing software.
Instructions
1. Load the tape into your camcorder and rewind it to the beginning if it isn't rewound already. Set the camcorder to VTR mode. Connect the camcorder to your computer while it is turned off via audio-visual cables to the video capture card port on the back of the computer. Turn on your computer.
2. Open a new project in your video editing program and open the "Import" or "Import From Video Device" function. Select your connected camcorder as the device from which to import. Click "Browse" next to the location to save to the hard drive and select where you would like the imported file to save to the hard drive. Click "Start" to begin importing and wait for the movie to finish---this will take as long as the movie plays.
3. Once the movie is saved to disk and editable in the video program, click the "File" menu and select "Export." Set the compression file type to what you prefer that will come in at less than 600 megabytes---for example, a compressed AVI file one hour in length will take up roughly that amount of disk space.
4. Insert a blank CD in your CD-Recordable drive. Open a new project in your disc burning program. Press the "Add File" button and navigate to the location of the AVI file. Select the video file. Select "Burn Disc"and wait for your CD to finish burning.
Tags: capture card, degradation from, file Select, hard drive, Open project