I have a lots of Digital8 home movies that I have shot. My digital8 video camera was stolen, so I'm in the market to get a new one. I'd rather my new camera use MiniDV, but will also need something to transfer all of my personal digital8 tapes and customers digital8 tapes to DVD.

If I get a Hi8 camera to transfer the tapes to my PC, will it maintain the digital quality that the tapes were originally recorded with?

I think this is an easy question and maybe I'm making this more difficult than it really is.

A Hi 8 camcorder doesn't have Firewire output so you will be stuck with just analogue video as Hi 8 is an analogue format. As far as I know you can't playback D8 tapes on a Hi 8 camcorder but you can playback Hi 8 tapes on a D8 camcorder. If you have a collection of D8 tapes the only solution is to purchase a D8 camcorder and connect it to the computer using a Firewire cable, edit on the computer and burn the finished movie out to DVD.

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