Capturing Hi-8 without color loss

[bluesix]

Whether I capture Hi-8 from a H-8 camcorder directly to my pc via composite or s-video or I use my digital-8 capture to my pc via firewire, I still get serious color-loss. I even tried copying the hi-8 to dv and then transferring but the same result still occurs.

There is nothing wrong with my hi-8 tapes. On a tv they have crisp colors and are just as good as new though they are at least 3 years old.

Is there a solution for me?

bluesix.

[bb]

You mean if you capture the analogue way, then everything's ok, but if you walk the digital path, then you get the color loss?

Sounds weird to me, because when I captured a Hi-8 shot using a Sony Digital-8 camcorder from a friend of mine, I didn't experience any color loss. You could of course tweak the colors by filtering afterwards, but that's all but a perfect solution. Do you have any analogue-to-digital conversion settings in your camcorder's menus?

bb

[bluesix]

I mean that I get color loss no matter whatever I try. What setup did you use to capture that hi-8 tape with your digital 8? I have a Sony digital 8 and though the picture looks good in the preview window of the camcorder - it is quite worse when I transfer to the pc via firewire.

Now I do see a text display on my camcorder preview screen that looks like this:

Hi-8 --> Dig8

That happens while just as I start to capture the video.

Perhaps there is a setting to keep it at Hi-8?

Filtering is not a good option as there is nothing that comes close to good color correction. It is like colorizing a black and white clip.

bluesix.

[bb]

I agree with what you say about the filtering option, and this was meant to be a last resort.

Hi-8 is an analogue format like VHS. It's not possible to capture this format through firewire except by converting it to DV, and that's exactly what the Digital-8 camcorder does. So this "Hi-8 --> Dig8" message should be ok. You can try to capture the Hi-8 video through S-Video or Composite, though (e.g. using VirtualDub). On the PC side you'd connect to a video-in graphics card or to a TV card.

If you can get your hands on a DV conversion box like the Canopus ADC-100 (hope I got the name right...), another option would be to try if such a box does a better conversion job to DV format than the converter which is integrated in your camcorder. You'd connect the analogue out of your cam to the box, and connect the box to the PC via firewire.

My setup was straight-forward: I did nothing but connect the cam to the PC via firewire and then captured the DV like I always do with my Canon camcorder. The conversion was done automatically, and I don't remember any settings I could have chosen (as I said I did it only once, and it wasn't my camcorder). If you don't find any settings in the camcorder, then there's probably nothing you can do. :(

bb

[Foambullet]

I dont' want to distract from the main question but I have a similar problem... Whenever I capter MiniDV thru firewire the pictrue is super-dark, almost unviewable, but when watching on TV or anything else the pic is fine. I bought the camera used from a professional friend of mine and he has never had problems.

I thought maybe these two problems are related.

[bb]

You mean the picture of the captured AVI file is very dark when you play it on the PC, e.g. using Windows Media Player?

bb

[Foambullet]

Yes, exactly, with any program on PC, like WMP, Virtualdub, and Premiere.

[bb]

That's weird. Maybe some codec settings (decoder part)? Or overlay settings?

...but when watching on TV or anything else the pic is fine.
Watching on TV through PC's TV out or with the camcorder connected to the TV set?

bb

[Foambullet]

Whoops, I meant through the camera's analog outputs the pic looks good, but anytime it goes through DV (during capture, playback on PC, etc.) the picture is too dark. I don't think it's the codec because it happened before and after I started using the Panasonic codec.

My theory (but I don't know much about these things) is that it could be my cheap firewire card (it's OHCI compliant though), it was $20 and came with a cable, whereas I saw that most often cables alone cost up to $50. But then again it would seem to me that if the signal was bad I'd be getting no picture at all instead of one that is functional but dark.

Update: Umm OK I finally found the gamma correction in Adobe Premiere and moving the slider down to 5 makes the picture look pretty good, I can't do a comparison cause my cam's battery is dead and I don't have the charger here.

Is there some way for the gamma to be thrown off through DV?

[GunX]

the darker image on a PC it's normal. the TV set adds a "gama burst" of about 33%. that's way in pro editing we use a TV monitor (normal, interlaced @ 50Hz PAL or 60Hz NTSC) to see the real video with real colours, if the target video is for TV display.

for another luminance corection try using the levels filter/effect

[Foambullet]

Ah, I thought this topic ws dead, thanks for responding.