how much memory

[annieigma]

Hi All,
Bit of a geeky question. i have a hi-8 video camera and want to transfer all the tapes to a computer hard drive or memory stick or something. firstly, what is the best thing to put them on? I know dvd's get scratched easily and oxidise over time.so thought a computer type memory would be better. and, how much memory will i need? I have about 15 hours of tapes,
how does this relate to gigabytes etc.?
answers in plain English please, dumb blonde.
Thanks,
Annie.

[VHG]

How are you going to get the video off the video camera on to your PC?

Normally you need a video capture card in your PC to do this, so you have something to plug your video camera in to.

Giving an amount of space that video takes is difficult as video can be copied at different quality formats. Same with an mp3 song, if it is low quality the file will be small, if top quality the file will be large.

But as a general comment video files can be very very large and you will not get 15 hours of video on a memory stick.

It may be a good idea to buy an external hard drive JUST to put the video on, and maybe also copy it all to DVD (2 copies of each) just to make sure.

If you are going to all the effort to put the stuff on to computer better to make 2 or 3 copies of it, rather than the one which may get lost or damaged.

[VHG]

btw it may be better and easier to use a DVD recorder linked to your TV to capture the video.

Then you can plug the video camera in to that, then copy the video off the camera on to recordable DVD. Then at least you have a "master" copy of each video tape.

Then once the video is on DVD you can put the DVD in your computer and copy the data off the DVD and onto the computer so you can edit it and so on.

Then much easier to put it back on DVD direct from the computer.