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Hi-8 Video Tapes and History
History Hi8 was introduced in 1989 by Sony and are very similar in quality to SVHS. The format was adopted by many news agencies since the signal was near broadcast quality, and the camcorders were relatively inexpensive. Most of the news footage from the Gulf war was recorded on Hi8 camcorders. The format uses a 4 pin din cable to carry the separated signals, chrominance and luminance, versus the composite type that combines the signal over one wire, thus avoiding the color encoding process and its inevitable loss of picture quality. Hi8 requires special equipment to play.
Tech Stuff Hi8 video tapes record their signal at about 400 lines of horizontal resolution, slightly less than Mini DV, but substantially higher than 8mm or regular VHS formats. Most often, Slight quality loss is suffered when copying or editing from HI-8, but a better than average image is maintained. Hi8 makes a good master because dupes from them look as good as a VHS original, however they do require special equipment to view, and they are analog, so some signal loss is inevitable in the dubbing process.
Unsolicited Customer Testimonial:
Ken, it's been a month or so since I got the tapes back with the 8mm films I sent you for conversion. It' took that long for me to crawl into the attic and find my super-vhs recorder in order to play back the tapes..... But WOW!!!!!!!!!!!! I have to state right here that your company's handling and processing of these films, some dating back to 1942!!,Was exemplary! Although some were just barely watchable due to emulsion fade after all these years, no fault of yours, that was to be expected for a few of the films, what your process pulled out of these old 8mm worn and faded films is literally incredible!! The color correction to most of the color films made them seem like they were shot yesterday, even though they dated back to the mid 40's. No mean feat!! And the transfer to Super Vhs was flawless! My heartfelt thanks to all of you and your technicians on a job very well done!!
