Digitizing & video editing on 8887-Newbie

I bought my 8887 from PC Torque almost a year ago, and love it, but have only used it for MS Office stuff.

Now, I'm looking at all my Hi8 raw footage, and even stuff on VHS that I'd like to digitize and preserve on dvd. And, I'd like to do just a bit of video editing, just cut and fade, and modest titling (and maybe a little A-B roll, or am I pushing it now?).

My 8887 is equipped as follows: any hardware & software suggestions and links for simple digitizing, burning, editing would be gratefully accepted!

Sager 8886/8887-S Notebook/8886/8887-S
Display: 16.1" UXGA LCD/128MB ATI
Video card Mobility Radeon 9000 128MB
Processor: 2.8GHZ P4 533 FSB
RAM: 1024MB (2 DIMMs)
Hard Drive: 60GB 5400RPM
2nd Hard Drive: No
Media Drive: 8X DVD/24X10X24 CDRW Combo Drive
2nd Media Drive: No
Modem: 56K V.90
Network Card: 10/100 NIC
Operating System: WIN XP PRO
Keyboard Layout: USA
Floppy Drive: 3.5" Floppy Drive
Battery: Primary Li-ION battery pack

12V Car Power Adapter: Direct power cable for car
Extra AC Power Adapter: No
Spare Battery: No
Wireless Network: No
MP3 Player: No MP3 player or RAM
Accessory: TV Tuner and Remote
Software Bundle: No
Office Software: No
Warranty: 1 year warranty, lifetime tech support

Thanks! Looks like the Sony DCR-TRV350 would be about right to convert the Hi8 and also VHS/SVHS to digital and into the 8887 via firewire. Will probably get a Maxtor One Touch 250 gig usb/firewire 7200 rpm external hard drive that can be used either with the 8887 or my desktop pc.

Maybe the software that comes with the camcorder or even the software that comes with XP would be enough for such editing as I want to do.

Next, to burn DVD, what's preferable, is there an internal DVD burning drive for the 8887, or would one for the desktop pc or an external unit be better?

Thanks for the info! When the Canopus ADVC-100 was mentioned, I googled and found http://www.dvdrhelp.com/forum/viewto...advc+camcorder , an interesting thread on using passthrough on digital8 vs digitizing with a Canopus.

You're welcome, Steve.

Speaking of the S-video In Port, I've got one of those, too, what exactly does it do, manual doesn't say much about it?

I asked Sager tech support about this, and here is the answer:

"Hi Clay, the S-video in port is for you to input analog video signal from
VCR or camcorder. The TV studio software can record the input video and save
it as MPEG II format. You can convert MPEG II to movie format and burn it to
DVD-R disc.

I have not heard any problem on audio & video sync."
Wow! Pretty exciting! No Canopus needed, nor a digital8 with pass through!! Let's each try it out and report on results here!

Now I remember why I never installed tv studio back when I bought 8887--it wouldn't install. So I put the installation cd away and forgot about it until I heard it might be what I want now. It still doesn't install, so I'm contacting sager tech support for help. This will really be neat if it works!

Still can't get the tv tuner to work, even with sager tech support. It may either need a win xp reinstall and lose all my settings, or a tv tuner hardware problem, may have to send it to sager.

Wish I knew if the tv tuner analog to digital feature is as good as a digicam pass through or a canopus. Anyone out there know?

Another possibility could be to fix the tv tuner problem before the 1-year warranty runs out in a couple of weeks (everything else is fine), then trade in on an 8890 with a dvd burner--that would save buying an external one, although the available 2x internal unit may be too slow(?). Wonder what the trade in value of my 8887 would be?

I sent my 8887 out to Sager to get the TV Studio to work. Sager said it was not a hardware problem, but that reinstalling the OS would be necessary. They reinstalled Win XP Pro and sent back my 8887 with the cpu loose (all 4 screws missing) causing the machine to operate improperly. I found 4 screws at a hardware store, installed them (Sager is sending out 4 screws and the springs that go with them) and all is well.

Next, after removing/reinstalling TV Studio one more time, it worked.

Before doing all of the above, the question I had was whether TV Studio/8887 be able to convert analog to digital with the same quality as if I used a Digital8 camcorder pass through, or a Canopus converter.

I still don't have an answer. I took some of my Hi8 footage, sent the video through an S-video cable and into the 8887 to see what it looked like. It looks horrible!. Either you see a 3" x 4" picture on the 8887 screen that is soft focus, like shooting through gauze, or, maximizing the screen, a rather grainy, nasty-looking picture with visible pixelization (really noticeable in a wide screen pan shot).

I also tried to capture a few single jpg shots from the footage, they didn't look too good, either.

Next, I wondered if, even though the video looks like *!**!! on the computer monitor, it originally didn't look that bad on the tv screen, so if I just held my nose while editing it on the pc, maybe it would look ok when back in a tv set. Since I don't have a dvd burner yet, I connected an S-video cable to the 8887 output and into a vcr. No luck there, you only see on tv everything that's on the computer monitor **except** TV Studio or WinDVD picture being played back!

So now, my question is: Is all my Hi8 footage, which looked pretty good on TV, possibly just a lot of rubbish and unfit to digitize and edit, or is the 8887/TV Studio just turning the footage into rubbish, and Digital8 pass through or a Canopus converter are what's needed to maintain quality? Anyone?

I asked lordsmuf.com about the bad quality capture on 8887's TV Studio and got this reply:

"AVerMedia cards are pretty bad. And the capture software (NeoDVD) sucks. Look at my non-ATI AVI capture guide. No good MPEG-2 capture method exists for non-ATI cards."

...continues monologue:

********** of lordsmurf.com kindly wrote me again and recommended either the Canopus ADVC-100 to convert analog to AVI/DV or the TDK indiCAPTURE to convert analog to MPEG.

Which format to use? lordsmurf.com "CAPTURE GUIDES: AVI vs MPEG" says that if you intend to do any serious editing, use AVI, and use MPEG if you're just transferring from analog to digital and will only be cutting out commercials or similar lite edits.

So, I hope my experience will be of benefit to someone out there!

Got Canopus yesterday, initial try shows much nicer looking digital output (as seen on laptop screen) than from 8887's built in TV Studio.