Hi8/Video8

PiKe · 21 Sep 2011 at 11:49

I'm after a camcorder to play back old video8 and hi8 formats over firewire. The original camera they were recorded on has long since broken and I can't get it to play back on a more recent Hi8 (presumably digital only) camera.

Can anyone suggest a few models which might be suitable? The tapes were originally recorded on a Sony camera.

Grimley · 21 Sep 2011 at 18:13

AFAIK Sony stopped supporting Hi8 sometime ago. best bet is to go on the auction site for a 2nd hand one or google 'rent hi8 camcorder'.

Sin_Chase · 21 Sep 2011 at 18:31

I've been converting Video8 recently and had to do some research.

A Video8 cam won't play Hi8.
A Hi8 camera should be able to Video8
SOME Digital8 cams can play Video/Hi8

The former 2 are analogue while the latter is obviously digital.

I bought the cheap Compro C100 capture card from here and feed an analogue signal over composite from a Video8 cam playing Video8 tapes.

2nd hand is your best bet, or borrow!

PiKe · 22 Sep 2011 at 09:10

Presumably with the right camera, you'd get an analogue picture over DV? Or is that impossible?

topgun06 · 20 Jun 2014 at 19:50

Hi all,

Please bear with me...

Sorry to resurrect this fossil of a thread but I am after some help relating to Video8 playback.

I've been looking at digitising some old Video8 tapes ranging from 25 to 15 years old! All these tapes were recorded on an ancient Sony Video8 Handycam which I still have today. The camera seems to work fine! I bought a video capture dongle with RCA cable to capture the playback from the camcorder and initially had success.

I managed to capture around 20minutes of playback perfectly from a tape which is 24 years old. The 20 minutes consisted of me as a 2month old lying on the floor! But then the playback stopped and the camcorder prompted me to eject the tape. Since this happened the quality of playback has been extremely poor on whichever tape I tried to play, and I would soon be prompted to eject the tape once again, if not immediately.

I did a bit of reading and several places suggested cleaning the reader heads using a cleaner tape. That tape arrived today and I gave it a whirl.

I now no longer get prompted to eject the tape but the quality of the playback is terrible. See image:

There is no sound and I just get the fuzzy effect seen in the above image. I am beginning to think the tapes have degraded but it is odd how those 20minutes I managed to capture now no longer play clearly.

Do anyone of you wonderful people have any ideas which could help me out?

Thanks so much in advance.

Edit: If anyone thinks this would be better suited to Photography & Video then ill create a new thread in there.

lucid · 20 Jun 2014 at 21:47

Could be head clogged with oxide or a tape alignment issue. Try a cleaning tape first if you have one.

topgun06 · 20 Jun 2014 at 22:03

I've tried one of the cleaner tapes and it improved things by allowing the tapes to played again, instead of the constant eject message. However, the playback is still as the above image demonstrates.

I have read a little about alignment. Are you able to elaborate at all?

lucid · 20 Jun 2014 at 22:15

One of the features of video8/Hi8 is auto tracking. That was quite an innovative thing back in the early '80's when the format started life. However, if there's dirt on the capstan rollers and pinch guides then it can throw things out of whack more than the tracking system can cope with. Cleaning tapes don't always do a thorough job. That's why the bench engineers at the place I worked used to clean decks and mechs with isopropanol alcohol and swab sticks. They'd then adjust the tape path alignment for accurate replay of a test tape.

I have no idea how you'd go about doing that as a DIYer though.