8mm Adaptor?

[GANUT4WDW]

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Hope that each of you had a great one! I am in the process of trying to save my old VCR tapes onto DVD's. However, I have a problem. Does anybody know if there is such a thing as an 8 mm adaptor? My very first camcorder used these tapes and I played them from my camera----which is now broken. These tapes have very special things on them such as the first moments of my children's lives and I want to be able to see them again. Any suggestions??

 

[MarkBarbieri]

There really isn't such a thing as an 8mm adapter. You cannot play an 8mm tape in a VHS VCR with any sort of adapter.

What you need is something that will play an 8mm tape that your computer can understand. There are a couple of options.

One option is to get a Digital 8mm video camera that can play an 8mm tape and output DV over firewire. With something like that, you could hook up the camcorder to your computer via firewire and record directly from the camcorder to your computer as DV.

Another option would be to hook up a regular 8mm video camera to a standalone DVD recorder and record directly from 8mm tapes to DVDs.

Yet another option would be to hook up a regular 8mm video camera to an A/D converter box connected to your computer and record on your computer.

 

[Khokhonutt]

Agreed. I picked up a camera like this one a few years ago and it's done great.

I primarily purchased it to dub our old 8mm tapes, but it does a good job as a digital camcorder as well. With the firewire connection (they call it a i.LINK DV Interface, but it's simple firewire), it also makes a fine video capture device, using the A/V cable that comes with the camera.

All three for under $300 has me thinking about buying a spare, just in case, as they are getting harder to find.

 

[seashoreCM]

If you buy just about any 8mm camcorder, including a secondhand one that works well, you should have no problem playing and duplicating those tapes.

But I would advise against a model that has just a video connection that plugs into the yellow jack or the antenna coax stud of a VCR or DVD burner. Much better quality is had with an S-video connection and still better results are had with VGA or RGB or Y/Pb/Pr (component video) or digital (HDMI/DVI).

Video hints: http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm

 

[Khokhonutt]

If you buy just about any 8mm camcorder, including a secondhand one that works well, you should have no problem playing and duplicating those tapes.

But I would advise against a model that has just a video connection that plugs into the yellow jack or the antenna coax stud of a VCR or DVD burner. Much better quality is had with an S-video connection and still better results are had with VGA or RGB or Y/Pb/Pr (component video) or digital (HDMI/DVI).

Video hints: http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm

While I agree that S-Video and component video are great, I doubt you're going to notice the difference when working with the old 8mm tapes. That's also a non issue if you're capturing directly to the computer via firewire.

 

[GANUT4WDW]

Thanks for all your advice. One other suggestion that I have been given is that there are places that will actually do the transfer for you. I'm not sure what the cost would be but if its somewhere close to the cost of a new camera -- I would definitely opt for the camera.