We would like to find out the best way to continually take 8 mm videos of meetings and put them on CDs to send to the members of our company in the field.

We would then expect that they could see the videos using their CD players in their computers.

The length of the Videos is about 40 mins.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

-- Walt Brown (walt@mirapoint.com), April 26, 2000

Answers

You need the following things to put video on CD: A video capture device A CD-Writer with software

You need the following thing to make a "true" video cd A video capture device A Video CD encoder(such as Xing, LSX, or Panasonic) A CD-Writer CD-Writer software that can make a Video CD.(Such as EZ-CD Deluxe, WinOnCD, or NTI CD Maker.

For your purpose, you would not need a true video cd. You could just take AVI files and write them on a CD using a data cd mode. A true video cd is for viewing on computers, video cd players, and most DVD players. Hope this helps.

-- Jay (jlink84@yahoo.com), April 26, 2000.

Mr. Brown,

Is this a Hi 8 or just a plain 8mm? This is important since the Hi 8 has better resolution, which translated into higher quality capture result using average capture boards. Capture board comes in a variety of quality and using many different formats.

Capture board ranges are professional grade, mid-grade, and consumer grade. The professional boards are the best you can have to do realtime high quality(laserdisc,DVD) video capture in mpeg2(SVCD to DVD); These boards' prices starts at $6,000.00 and up to $32,000.00 plus. The mid-grade boards also allow you to do realtime video capture in SVHS to VHS quality in mpeg1(VCD); Their price ranges are $5,000.00 to $1,500.00. The consumer grade gives you VHS (if you have high quality input) and below quality. Their price ranges are $1,000.00 to $300.00. Go to these site www.bernclare.com and www.digitalpole.com to look at their video capture board selections. If you're using Hi-8 tapes, then all you really need is a mid-grade or upper end consumer grade video capture board. Optibase and Vitec makes these type of boards(realtime mpeg1 encoder).

There are three basics video stream file formats which you can use with the old window media player on your PC without further software or codecs installation. They are *.mpg(mpeg1), *.avi(video for window), and *.mov(quicktime). Most of your professional grade capture cards use mpeg1 and mpeg2 format. The mid-grade cards use mpeg1 format. The consumer grade cards uses mpeg1, mpeg2, and avi. AVI and MOV have the biggest file size even in highly compressed format, but they give you the best quality from low grade video inputs such as VHS or 8mm. Your 40 minutes of video will take approximately 2.4 gigabytes of diskspace (4 CD's). Mpeg1 on the other hand trades off quality for file size. Mpeg1 at VCD bitrate will allow you to store 74 minutes worth of video in one single CD. If you want to preserve as much quality as possible and still have small enough file size so that you can fit a 40 minutes of video into a single CD, then you can capture your video clip in AVI format and then spend 3.5 hours to convert your AVI into mpeg1 either in VCD or slightly higher bitrate (2000kb/s max). Alternatively, you can spend the money on a mid-grade card to capture the mpeg1 directly and still preserve the quality with either VCD or higher bitrate (2000kb/s max).

-- (wingstarzz@hotmail.com), April 26, 2000.

I am using an All-In-Wonder 128 pro, to capture video,in MPG1 format, using Multimedia center (the software is bundled with the card, Then I edit the files with TMPGenc (Freeware, avalaible at www.tmpgenc.com) It has a nice Merge and Cut menu under File -> MPEG Tools. Then I compile the files and burn a VCD using Nero. It takes about an hour to edit the files and make the CD plus the capture time. The quality for Video8 is good. Now I am trying to make SVCD to capture my Hi8 tapes, but I have not found the right software to edit the files.

-- Arturo (escobosa@yahoo.com), May 06, 2001.