MOV vs. DV in converting video 8

Question

i was in the midst of converting my old video 8 camcorder tapes to DV files by playing my camcorder through a analog-to-digital converter and saving the output in imovie. unfortunately, my camcorder failed and is only outputing black & white video. so, i'm trying to figure out the very best way to complete this project with my number one priority being maintaining as high quality (as high as it can be for video 8) video and audio as i can in the conversion and editing process so that i can avoid lossy steps and maintain long-term flexible format for future storage.
i've been trying to understand all the complicated options. most of the commercial conversion services seem to convert video 8 to mpeg-2 which would involve multiple lossy steps from conversion to my editing. i'm having trouble finding services that convert video 8 to full digital (uncompressed, lossless) output (like DV, i think). one company will convert to MOV format. i'm trying to understand how this is different from DV. i understand it's a lossless conversion and that it's a container for DV. but is it true that imovie won't import MOV? if i need a conversion from MOV to another format (like DV?), is this a lossy step? is there any quality disadvantage to MOV vs. DV? i'd really appreciate any clarification as i'm having trouble figuring out these details from all my reading so far.

Answer 1

Beverly Maneatis wrote:
As stated, the quality you get is only as good as your source. Analog footage is still lower quality than digital. That said, my digital version of VHS footage looked better than the original.
I converted all my old analog VHS and Hi-8 tapes to DV footage using a miniDV camcorder. But, instead of connecting it directly to my computer, I did it in two steps. First, I recorded the analog tapes to miniDV tapes using a miniDV camcorder. I have a Sony and it does have a CTRL/REC button in Playback mode, so recording was easy. I connected my Hi-8 player to the camcorder and just played it as the camcorder recorded.
Then, I connected the camcorder to my computer and imported the .DV footage from the miniDV tapes into iMovie. I am still using iMovie 6, and .dv is its preferred format for video, so it worked beautifully. The VHS video actually looked quite a bit better as digital dv; I thought the Hi-8 footage looked about the same. I chose to use this two-step method because my VHS tapes were already degrading and I wanted to convert them all before they became completely useless. This method allowed me to import the dv footage from the miniDV tapes as I needed it without worrying that the quality would go down if it took me a few months to get to the point where I needed that particular footage.
In addition, I now have all the raw video digitized on tape.
For my purposes of creating DVDs from nicely edited iMovies of our old family photos and videos, this method worked great. I now have a DVD collection of these family treasures from 1890s to June of 2010. I am working on the 2010 iMovies now. It was, of course, much easier to do this with video shot from about 1999 and later after we got our digital camcorder and I did not have to do any conversions.
Beverly,
What makes you think commercial video conversion house can not do any better than what Ziatron suggested?
Consumers always vote with their wallet especially in this tough economy. Don't you think they would all go out of business if people figured out a cheap and perfect way to convert analog to digital? They would, but some have not.
Secondly, I suspect that the apparent improvement in your analog to digital conversion is probably not due to the conversion, but due to the newer and better HDTV panels with excellent upconversion circuitry. I have several commercial made Hollywood DVDs that played fine on our old Sony CRT tube TV and our new Panasonic Alpha-IPS panel HDTV. Guess what. It looked 2x better on the Alpha panel. In fact, digital photos played on the Alpha panel looked heck a lot sharper and vibrant than an old tube TV. Also, the LCD display on your camcorder does not display a high resolution video image. Modern LCD panels on some digital compacts with 920k pixels display can display almost life like videos over the same video footage.
In fact during the mid 80 to 90s, some companies lied to their customers how well their film compact cameras did. Most notable was Minolta. It was a known fact that certain Minolta film compact models can not capture sharp photos. And during that time, Fuji Film came out with their first Frontier photo lab which can do digital manipulation to get a better looking photo. Minolta printed their film with the Frontier and the prints came out sharp, vibrant and with good contrast. Trade shows after shows, I was surprised and baffled as to how a POS camera with a poor lens can somehow magically turn out great photos. Only later when customers bought their cameras and complaints started pouring in that we found out that unless you use a Frontier lab to print photos, normal labs will show how bad their cameras were.
Having said that, analog to digital conversion hinges on how well the source analog video is. The key is a good analog to digital converter, not DV media. Digital is 1 and 0. Analog can be 1, 1.1, 1.2 etc.. Digital conversion need good sampling rate of the analog signal to recreate a digital equivalent. Digital media and compression rate has nothing to do with how good the final conversion looks like. First, the lens on the camcorder has to be of good quality. Likewise, no amount of super analog to digital conversion is going to make a poor lens look like a million bucks. Minolta tried it and got caught! Most people confuse about how well their digital conversion is andd recommended the same process to their friends. Unfortunately, not everyone owns a similar quality camcorder and even with the same process, you will not produce the same results. This has been my experiencce.
One of the advantages of going with a commercial entity is that their equipment should at least be caliberated (meaning head alignment). When is the last time you followed your camcorder service schedule and have the head and transport mechanism checked or serviced? I am willing to bet that the answer would be a no to a lot of people. How can you then achieve the best conversion quality if these variables are not even looked at?