If you have hours upon hours of footage and stacks of 8mm tapes, expect to spend that long converting your tapes to digital.įor tech-savvy folks, DIY can be a viable option. So, if you have an hour of footage, the conversion will take about an hour. Keep in mind that when you start the conversion, the process will take about as long as the footage on your tapes. You must also purchase an analog-to-digital converter, which can range in cost from about $100 to about $500, depending on the quality of the converter. You may need multiple camcorders to play different 8mm tape formats. If you do choose this option, though, make sure you have camcorders available to play the 8mm tapes you have. However, at-home video tape transfer can have its advantages and disadvantages.
The DIY route is one possible option with 8mm tape conversion. To preserve the memories stored on you 8mm camcorder tapes, it is essential to convert the contents to digital files and/or DVDs, which last a lot longer and are much easier to store and view.Īs with most specialized services, you have a couple options for media conversion: DIY or consult a professional. While you can try to store these tapes as carefully as possible to make them last longer, the 8mm magnetic tape will eventually degrade so much that your videos will become unwatchable. In fact, the magnetic tape on these compact cassettes tends to deteriorate over time, typically losing 10 to 20 percent of its signal after 10 to 25 years. Lifespan of 8mm Camcorder TapesĪs perfect as 8mm tapes were for the portability of smaller camcorders and more accessible home video-making in the 1980s, these old video tapes were not designed to last forever. Whichever format you have, though, you have videos stored on media that is slowly, even quickly, losing its contents. There are different versions of 8mm video – Video8, Hi8, and Digital8 – updates which succeeded one another as technology progressed.
#Easiest way to convert vhs tapes to digital portable#
Since 8mm was so much more portable and convenient than VHS and Betamax, 8mm tape caught on fast.
Sony then introduced the Handycam, which was one of the first cameras to use 8mm video technology, thus fully launching 8mm video into the commercial home video sphere.Īt the time, 8mm video tape was great because it made video recording more accessible to at-home and amateur videographers. About 8mm Camcorder TapesĪt their core, 8mm camcorder tapes are simply tapes with an 8mm wide magnetic tape that is encased in a compact cassette.īut how did 8mm tapes become popular, and why do you need to preserve them? History of 8mm Videoįor a bit of background history, the 8mm video format first came around in 1984 when Eastman Kodak introduced the technology. The great news is, you can absolutely save the content on those 8mm camcorder tapes by converting them to digital. What’s more, the tapes won’t last forever. This makes watching the content stored on those tapes almost impossible. Like so many media formats in a rapidly advancing world of technology, 8mm video has become nearly obsolete. And these tapes may contain priceless moments that you can’t watch unless you can somehow get your old camcorder to work and find the cord to hook up to the TV. If you taped any home videos in the ‘80s and ‘90s, then you likely have 8mm camcorder tapes stored somewhere.