Thinkpads Forum

Anyone familar with the process of transferring Hi8 video to ThinkPads?

Links, info, tips, and recommendations on equipment appreciated.

I'm about ready to sell my Sony HandiCam and I'd really like to transfer some tapes to my T30. Then burn to VCD.


Thanks, KC

Maybe you should ask in a forum for video or in the general hardware area. Even though the computer is a thinkpad it is still just a computer so that question is directly related to the fact that it is a Thinkpad

Maybe you can find an online forum for video editing where they describe how to do it.

All you need to know is at dvdrhelp.com, super forums and great people.

I wouldn't burn to VCD, I'd go to half-res DVD.

Myself, I use firewire and a DV camera with passthrough to convert (play tapes on old cam, line into DV cam, firewire out to PC). You need much less horsepower to capture video than to actually edit and render the stuff.

If you have video in on the TP, you can capture the video straight out of the camera, but you need a large defragged HD and a fast machine. I've never had much success with that, that's why I go the DV conversion route.

There are a few ways to go.
1 Get a pcmcia video encoder card pretty expensive.
2 If you plan on buying or borrowing a minidv camera with anolog in jacks, then you can use the "passthru" feature and the minidv does the encoding and transfers it to the tp via firewire. If your t30 doesn't have firewire you will need a pcmcia firewire card.
3 If you are planning on buying a Digital8 camcorder, it will play the analog hi8 tapes also, encode to digital and transfer to tp via firewire.
4 You can buy a usb2 encoder such as a Plextor PX-AV100U Digital Video Converter around 60 bucks.
5 Capture it to a friend's video computer that is already setup for this.
6 Pay someone to do it. Least likely option costwise.

I assume you want to burn to vcd because you don't have a dvd writer.
In all reality, if this is more than a 1 time shot and you are considering more in the future, just build/adapt a desktop video machine, a lot more proficient than a laptop would be, considering all. A lot more advantages.
AS mention above, dvdrhelp.com is a great source.