EachMoment

Hi8 Digitisation Services

Transfer Hi8 Cassette Tapes to Digital Format

Preserve your precious memories by converting your Hi8 tapes to digital formats with EachMoment. Hi8 tapes were a popular choice for home-movie makers during the 80s, designed to work with lightweight camcorders that the average consumer could buy and use at home. Although the format quickly fell into obsolescence, many people still have stacks of Hi8 and Video8 tapes taking up space in cupboards, on shelves, or collecting dust in the attic.

It's highly likely that most people no longer have the correct equipment to play these tapes. Like other magnetic tapes such as VHS, the contents of your old tapes and your treasured memories could soon lose their sharpness or be gone entirely, as the video stored on Hi8 cassettes can degrade by as much as 20% over 10 years. Don't let your memories fade away—convert your Hi8 tapes to digital formats like DVD, USB memory stick, or cloud storage today.

How We Digitise Hi8 Tapes

Our digitisation process is simple and secure:

  1. Order Your Memory Box: Let us know how many tapes you need digitising and how you want them returned to you. Take a look at our Memory Box options to decide which size is right for your media, and select an output format (USB memory stick, DVD, or cloud album).
  2. Send Us Your Tapes: Once the order has been placed, we'll deliver your empty Memory Box to your home the next day. Fill it up with your Hi8 tapes and any other media you wish to convert, and send it back via our tracked courier service.
  3. We Prepare Your Tapes: Your Memory Box will arrive with us quickly and safely, and we'll begin preparing your Hi8 tapes for digitisation. We assess and clean each piece of media individually, employing a two-pass wet/dry method using bespoke methods and sensitive tools to handle the fragile tape.
  4. Professional Digitisation: Once clean, we use broadcast-quality cassette players to playback and digitise each cassette. Domestic standard players and USB converters often produce a low-quality conversion and are sometimes prone to chewing up tapes, resulting in those precious memories disappearing forever. Our tape decks provide better sound quality and allow for adjusting the bias to achieve the highest output and best frequency response.
  5. Editing and Enhancement: After digitisation, files go through post-processing and editing to enhance sound and colour, bringing quality up as close to modern standards as possible. We correct any syncing issues, apply colour correction, adjust contrast and saturation, and improve audio levels using bespoke digital noise reduction (DNR) technology.
  6. Receive Your Digital Media: After editing, the files are moved onto your chosen output format and returned to you along with all your original media.

Why Should You Digitise Your Hi8 Tapes?

Hi8 players are outdated pieces of machinery that are susceptible to mechanical faults. These problems can cause the scan lines of a video to not sync correctly with the rest of the frame, resulting in a distorted image. Our customers often recall becoming frustrated trying to convert Hi8 to digital themselves using cheap AV adapters or FireWire ports. Cheap conversion equipment often results in a distinct drop in picture quality and can leave you with 'overscan'—unsynchronised lines at the bottom of the frame.

By choosing EachMoment, you ensure that your Hi8 tapes are digitised professionally using state-of-the-art equipment. We correct Hi8 syncing issues by using an independent time base corrector (TBC), which amends the Hi8's signal and image quality by inputting the video into a buffer, correcting the image before it is output again and formatted digitally.

The Best Way to Convert Hi8 Tapes to Digital

Once digitised, the digital files can be edited to bring your Hi8 tapes up to modern standards. Colour correction is applied where necessary, and contrast and saturation are adjusted accordingly. Audio levels of Hi8 tapes are relatively low compared to modern recording methods. To improve audio levels, we use bespoke digital noise reduction (DNR) technology and enhancement techniques to produce clearer sounds more in line with modern standards.

Why Wait? Digitise Your Hi8 Tapes Today!

Once these steps are complete, your Hi8 tapes are fully converted to digital formats, giving your footage a new lease of life. It's now time to relive your newly restored footage. Preserving your precious memories and gifting an EachMoment Memory Box to a friend or family member is an especially touching way to show how much you care about them. Whether it be a birthday, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, or Father's Day, the memories enclosed in an EachMoment Memory Box always make the most thoughtful gift.

Start Digitising your Hi8 tapes today and keep your memories alive for generations to come.

Preserve Other Media Formats

At EachMoment, we don't just convert Hi8 tapes. We also offer conversion services for a variety of media formats:

Explore our full range of services and let us help you preserve all your precious memories.

Contact Us

If you have any questions or need assistance, feel free to reach out. Our team of specialists is here to help you every step of the way.

Don't let your treasured memories fade away. Convert your Hi8 tapes to digital formats with EachMoment and keep them alive for generations to come.

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