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Response to About Hi-8

from nate ford (lynn@javanet.com)
Yeah, what Chris Said... Also, good Hi-8 looks better than shitty DV. If your friend's camera is one of the better ones and you use the good tapes (I like the Fuji ones that cost $11- from B&H) You can get a really decent image. Here are some other tips: Only use 60 min. tapes-not 120, which are made with thinner, more fragile tape. "Pack" your tapes before shooting: Fast-Forward them to the end, then rewind back to the beginning. (I'm not gonna explain why here-just trust me.) Record 1 or 2 minutes of black at the beginning of your tape-the first 2 minutes of the tape are the most prone to dropouts.(dropouts=bad) Edit on another format (SVHS, 3/4" or Beta if you're lucky), or at least hi8 dubs of the camera originals-hi8 is a tremendously fragile tape, and the wear and tear of the editing process will create (you guessed it)- dropouts. This isn't as much of an issue if you're editing on a computer as opposed to continuously fast-forwarding, rewinding, pausing, playing the tape on editing decks, but it's still a really good idea to have backups. If you're lucky, you'll have a local cable access station or school or something, where you can make your dubs through a time base corrector (TBC), which will vastly improve the quality of the dubs, and allow you to adjust brightness, color, etc. These and other tips can be found in the October '97 issue of "Videomaker", which I believe you can access at their web site- www.videomaker.com. Also, bear this in mind: There is no venue where your film will be shown where the slight resolution difference between hi8 and DV will make a difference. That is, short films never make money and are never theatrically released. The festival circuit, where your film will go if you're lucky, is not going to discriminate against you because of 20 horizontal lines of resolution. No one is going to pay to blow it up to 35mm, where the difference would be much more apparent. That said, best of luck.
(posted 9154 days ago)

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