I am hoping some of you have experience with this.

I have a Hi-8 camcorder I am going to be taking to football games this year to record the officials. Here is my problem. I have a digital camcorder, but MiniDV tapes only last for about an hour. I have a Hi-8 camcorder that will record up to 2 1/2 hours, but I don't want to produce a VCR tape for each official. I would rather give them each a DVD.

Do any of you have experience with a good quality video capture card that will take Hi-8 footage and convert it to DVD format?

This is a true GEEK question. LOL

I got a firewire capture card off ebay for $5.00 Then I use Pinnacle to download the movies and burn them to DVD.
It works pretty good.

The HI-8 camcorder I own does not have a firewire port. Are there any capture cards that will take S-Video or standard analog connections? I have both USB 2.0 and firewire ports in my PC.

Check either of these sites. Both sell high quality merchandise and offer some of the best pricing on the net.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com

http://www.newegg.com

[Edited by BktBallRef on Mar 15th, 2005 at 11:40 AM]

I bought a deck for about $300 (I think it is cheaper now) that dubs VHS tapes to DVD. It also has analog RCA inputs in the front where I dub from my digital camera. I have been very happy with the quality. The only downside is it is hard to edit together clips.

Try one like this.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...174697658&rd=1

BTW, if you are running Windows XP you probably have Windows Movie Maker. Pretty good program for doing what you want.

Mike,

Here is my solution. I use a Digital Hi-8 which is a drawback since you can only do one hour per tape but it is excellent for the entire application which I will explain later.

My recording deck is a Panasonic DVD recorder with a 120GB disc allowing storage of hours of video. I use S-Video to transfer from the camera to the recording deck. This can be accomplished overnight but the one hour limit does cost some time.

Once the video is on the recorder it can be edited to remove any unwanted material. Then copied from the hard disc to a DVD. The final copy requires less than 20 minutes if you selected a format that allows the entire video to fit on a single DVD. There is no loss of quality with the fast copy. Then DVD then has to be finalized which takes five to ten minutes. There is no need to watch the copy and finalize process, you only need to start them.

Then the DVD is placed on a Windows XP machine with a DVD burner where it can be copied. For multiple copies it is best to use something like Nero or Roxio to place disk files on the PC then you can copy to multiple DVDs.

How long does this process take.

Saturday evening at 6pm, place one tape in for copy before going to dinner. After dinner copy second video.

Sunday morning, edit HD video, if necessary. Make fast copy to DVD. Time 30 minutes plus time to edit. Only need to start the process.

Finalize DVD to make DVD-V for reproduction, 20 minutes. Only need to start the process.

Copy to hard disk, 20 minutes. Time to reproduce 20 minutes. Again, you only need to start the process.

I like the digital format, Digital HI-8 or miniDVD, because the quality produced and the fact stills, slow-mos, etc. are noiseless. Analog to digital seems to always loose some quality.

I want to thank everyone who provided a reply. I actually found out that my Digital Camcorder has a "pass through port" that allowed me to hook it up to my Hi-8 camcorder and capture the video to my PC.

I won't have to spend any additional money and I can still use my Hi-8 camcorder to record my games.

Does anyone have suggestions about where to place the camera and making sure the coaching staff or fans don't take it?

REPLY: Mike...encase it in a Rule Book. No coach or fan would ever look there! <a href='http://www.smileycentral.com/?partner=ZSzeb008_ZSzeb02822' target='_blank'><img src='http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/36/36_11_6.gif' alt='ROTFL' border=0></a>

ROTFL! Thanks for the laugh Bob.