What's the best way to digitize Sony Handycam Analog Video 8 Tapes. Output of camcorder is only coaxial.?

I tried all the capture hardware route and did not like the result and the time it took to get it right. I found that the Digital-8 camcorders will playback any 8mm format tape, digitize it and output it over firewire. All you need on your computer is a Firewire card. Simpler and much more useful than the capture hardware route. You end up with a digital camcorder that you can use for recording better videos. You can get a Sony Digital-8 Camcorder for around $280. A decent capture card from Viewcast costs over $1000.00. I have an Osprey 500 if you want to go that route. I also decided that the computer route for most of my videos was not necessary. I just wanted the to take my videos straight to DVD. I got a Panasonic Tabletop DVD recorder with a firewire input so that I did not have to spend hours watching and the tapes on my computer.

You need a capture card that works with analog. Pinnacle makes some for about $200 with software. The quality is decent, the limitation is the analog source which is a composite signal with the color quardratured over the monochrome source that is filtered out and converted to 8 bit or higher digial color. The back shield if your connector is a common ground, the others are for audio and a single composite video signal. Yellow is the video, white or red is the audio. The color signal is going to have some taint from the compositing and even time base errors (colors that shift location from line to line, frame to frame causing shimmy), but this is to be expected. If it had an S-Video connector this would lessen the problem. The comb filtering system is probably no better or worse than any of those used in digital camcorders or DTV sets priced under $500. You start getting into high end equipment, priced over $1,000 and you probably get better filters and better algorithms. You get what you pay for, the average person, however, would probably see no difference between a $200 capture card and a $5,000 analog capture card.

Use a digital converter or capture card having an RCA input (many brands have combination of ports). All analog videos pass through this device before you can upload to the computer. That three prong wire is the multi a/v cable that you need to connect the camcorder to the capture card. From there, follow the simple guided step of the camcorder manual or capture card manual. I too, still using such old camcorder (ccd-trv108) due to my line of work which is video editing & transferring (to dvd). The coaxial thing is for the beta, vhs and tv; and also the stand alone dvd recorder & burner (though same function as the vcr, it uses a harddisk instead).

Your Sony Handycam should output through a standard set of RCA connectors (red, white and yellow) which will connect to a video card in your PC or you could check out Dazzle a Pinnacle product to digitize analog video. Pinnacle's home page is http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Home/ Then click on "Dazzle"