transfer to CD?

[becomedeath]

To whom it may concern,

Does anyone know of a way to transfer super8 to CD. I want to transfer my footage to miniDV, but I don't have a miniDV camera or player. I've been having it transferd to regular 1/2" VHS up until now and I think it looses alot of quality when I capture it into my computer and it is converts it to digital. And then, of course, it again converts to analog when I export. I figured it should stay digital the whole time. Anyway, if anyone has any ideas it would be greatly appreciated. I'm too broke to buy a miniDV camera or player and I don't know anyone who has either, or I'd use theirs.
As a side note: I live in new york city and stopped by Pac-Lab today. That place is tiny, but seems to be quite efficient.
thanks guys,
tayman strahorn

[mcarter4121]

A digital camera could be purchased on credit and you not pay any interest for six months to a year. If you have a job, payments would be made, hopefully, and pay it completely off by the due date. That is how I got my Hi-8mm camera. And I put my movies on CD myself.
Since the movies are Hi-8mm, which is a lower quality than DV, they are also a smaller size as measured on the computer screen monitor. So, the format I use to put them on a CD to play on a DVD player is called SVCD. It is 480 x 480 MPEG-2, very compressed. They must be edited before encodeing to MPEG.
Raw captures of DV footage would fill up many many CDs. Way too many to make it worth doing that way. I can only fit one full sized reel of film on one CD at 640 x 480 in Hi-8mm or about 3 minutes of play on a CD in a normal capture left as is. That capture may be edited.
An SVCD plays for almost 40 minutes. Big difference.
Perhaps some film transfer place would put raw capture files of Super 8mm film onto a DVD-R or DVD+R. You would need to have a computer DVD player and know how to transfer them to the hard drive. They should NOT be in the MPEG format but in avi form? I don't know what file type miniDV encodes to, some kind of native DV/avi? Anyway, they would take up a lot of room.

[becomedeath]

So you're saying that one CD could hold one reel of transfered super8 footage (about 2 1/2 minutes)? If thats the case that would be good enough for me. But if that isn't the case and transfering to CDs is just not a good idea, would you know the cheapest miniDV camera that I can buy? I don't care to shoot any footage with it. I just want it to import into my computer.

thanks,
tayman strahorn

[mcarter4121]

Yep, that is the case, one reel of film on one CD. Already did that with my setup.
Don't know about the mineDV though. It I had one I'd use it to transfer with, but would also need Premiere 6.x and a firewire card.
Prices are way down now but I think around 500 would do for a miniDV. Hi-8 is around 300.