How do you put your 8mm tapes on your computer?

How do I put video tapes on computer?

• How can I put my DV Tapes onto my computer. Everyone is saying a firewire cable, but my camera has no firewire port. I have a Samsung Hi8 8mm Camcorder model SCW71 with 22x Optical Zoom and 880x Digital Zoom. Look it up. It has no firewire port. How do I get the tapes onto the computer for editing? This is the camera I use for my filmmaking and I need the vids on my computer.

• Answer:

  Ah, I see the difficulty here. Hi8 is not DV - you are not using DV tapes. DV is a digital format, Hi8 is analog. For analog formats, some kind of analog-digital conversion has to happen. If it was DV tape, FireWire would be the best way, as that's how to transfer DV without any conversion/compression beyond what's on the tape; but that's not what you're working with. For Hi8, if you had a FireWire port, you could use a converter like a Canopus/Grass Valley ADVC unit. As you don't have FireWire, you'd step down to a converter that works over USB, like the Dazzle by Avid/Pinnacle. Another thing to consider - is this a laptop? Desktop? In either case, you might have an expansion card slot on that computer somewhere, and would therefore be able to install a capture card or a FireWire card. Capture card might be best for now, but if you get a FireWire card, you could use that for fast external hard drives, other audio/visual interfaces, and many other things beyond just cameras. The downside is that you'd still have to get a converter to plug into the FireWire port. Your call, think about how future uses might apply. Once you get the tools, it's just a matter of using an editing program to do your work. Some converters come with some pretty good software. I think the Dazzle comes with either Pinnacle Studio or their newer Avid Studio, for example. Good luck!