However, if I can get a decent, quality transfer for considerably less cost, then I'd prefer to. I'm not averse to spending money if it truly is the best way to go.

What I'm looking to do is convert these analog tapes to digital and onto my PC to burn onto DVD, as relatively cost effectively as possible. On top of that, is the cost of some of these units like the ADVC-100/110/300's, or the price of purchasing an old Sony digital 8 series camcorder, which are both in the $100's of dollars. To say that I've been a little overwhelmed by the different products being mentioned in most threads, is an understatement. I've been researching ways to convert my old analong hi8 tapes from my Sharp Viewcam VL-AH50U into digital, and onto my PC, so I can both save them permantly and burn them to DVD.

New here, so forgive me if I'm breaking any rules, or posting in the wrong the place. But I only used it briefly, with my brother's camera, so I may be wrong.Hi guys. If I remember correctly, if you feed the DV signal to QT Player, it will record without transcoding, and the result is a mov file using the DV codec. The new iMovie, apparently, does not work that way. I had one of those cameras some years ago, and used it successfully with 'old' iMovie HD (in those versions, there was no transcoding, it worked on the DV format). Digital8 was basically DV, except for the tape, which was physically in the same form as Hi8 tapes. Yes, the output from a Digital8 camcorder is DV. Does the QT Player Record Movie work like this too? The Digital8 import to iMovie actually transcoded the signal, which (unnecessarily?) reduces the quality and unfortunately increases the disk storage requirements. Btw, is the firewire output from a Digital8 camcorder actually a DV signal? As of the analog to digital conversion I hoped that it would give me the best possible result as it gets performed inside a camcorder which also does digital recording.

Hi8 analog to digital converter box