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Easiest Way to Split and Convert Old Home Hi8 and Mini DVD Movies

G

gpspad

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 4, 2014
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I have been trying to convert my sisters old Sony Hi8 and Mini DVD Home Movies to Digital. I have an Elgato Video Capture that has been working OK.

The problem I have been having is splitting up the clips and keeping them in the same screen format.

I tried using iMovies to try and separate the clips, but iMovie insists on changing the format and making them wide screen.

Amy other suggestions for something just to split up a video file to multiple clips and keeping the standard format?
 
I’m more familiar with FCP than iMovie, so this may be irrelevant. Are you creating projects/movies for each clip either set to automatic or the parameters you want, and then draging sections of source into the project/movie ?
 
I am basically making each clip a project and then importing/editing so each clip will be its own project. Then I export to a file so all the clips on the tape will be their own file.

I don't think iMovie can save the project to preserve the original aspect ratio, it seems to be a limitation of iMovie, I also have to share/export the project and not the clip inside the project to preserve the edits I made.

There just seems to be a lot of limitations for such simple things in iMovie, all I need is to cut a few parts out of some video files.
 
So iMovie doesn’t have a share to file option? Can you afford FCPX for this?

Each clip is a project. You grab whatever you need from the sourse clip and paste/move it into the project, then edit the project to your satisfaction, then share the project, and move on to the next clip. Thats the general workflow for just about any editor. QT will do simple splits for you, but its easier to use an editor if you have a lot of them.
 
ColdCase said:
So iMovie doesn’t have a share to file option? Can you afford FCPX for this?

Each clip is a project. You grab whatever you need from the sourse clip and paste/move it into the project, then edit the project to your satisfaction, then share the project, and move on to the next clip. Thats the general workflow for just about any editor. QT will do simple splits for you, but its easier to use an editor if you have a lot of them.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately $300+ to split up some old movies is way too much for me. Im not much of a film maker, just trying to preserve the old media before it goes bad.
[doublepost=1554749498][/doublepost]I should have added iMovie does have a share option, its just that iMovie converts the files to wide screen, there appears to be no option to keep the file in its native aspect ratio.
 
I dunno, just trying to be helpful. I guess you can't create a SD movie in the current iMovie version? Older versions you may.

For grins I imported one of my old tapes files into iMovie and it gave me an option to export/save in 640x480 (the SD resolution)... in fact that was the only option. I couldn't export widescreen if I tried.

I started a new movie and the default settings was 720HD. Its suppose to automatically adjust to the clips resolution but didn't for me. The original SD clip was sized to fit 720HD either by fit or crop to fill in wide screen.

So the question is how to edit SD video in iMovie... and keep it SD.

I'm a little slow today, sorry.
[doublepost=1554752936][/doublepost]Just found this:

"please note that iMovie 10 or later versions have widescreen (or 16:9) aspect ratio.

Other resolutions are NOT supported. Only videos with the following resolutions can be edited and exported in iMovie:
  • 1920×1080 (1080p)
  • 1280×720 (720p)
  • 960×540 (540p)
  • 854×480 (480p)
Note: these aspect ratios are all 16:9. You have the option to insert black borders or use iMovie to crop/frame the video so that it could be used in another video editing tool.

If you want to use other aspect ratios (SD), then iMovie 10 or later is not to tool to use"

So Quicktime may be an option to simply split out slips from the longer files.
 
Last edited:
gpspad said:
iMovie insists on changing the format and making them wide screen.
Click to expand...
Widescreen is the only option in the current iMovie. For a 4:3 clip, place it in the Timeline, select it, then click on the crop button above the viewer and select the "Fit" option. You'll now see all the clip with black bars either side.

gpspad said:
I don't think iMovie can save the project to preserve the original aspect ratio
Click to expand...
It will if you do the above.

gpspad said:
there appears to be no option to keep the file in its native aspect ratio.
Click to expand...
As above.
 
Dave Braine said:
Widescreen is the only option in the current iMovie. For a 4:3 clip, place it in the Timeline, select it, then click on the crop button above the viewer and select the "Fit" option. You'll now see all the clip with black bars either side.


It will if you do the above.


As above.
Click to expand...

I will give this a shot thank you....
 
gpspad said:
I have been trying to convert my sisters old Sony Hi8 and Mini DVD Home Movies to Digital. I have an Elgato Video Capture that has been working OK.

The problem I have been having is splitting up the clips and keeping them in the same screen format.

I tried using iMovies to try and separate the clips, but iMovie insists on changing the format and making them wide screen.

Amy other suggestions for something just to split up a video file to multiple clips and keeping the standard format?
Click to expand...

Yes you can. You need to download a software called VideoProc. It's basically a lightweight video editing software that takes advantage of your built-in GPU for really fast video editing, cutting, splitting etc better than iMovie while keeping the same format. You can even split one large captured video into equal sized captures. Say you want to split one large old analog video into 5 segments in the same format it started with, then you can and can do it really fast depending on your level of GPU (Graphical Processing Unit). It's not limited to just 5 segments -- you can define as many split segments as you want. After you finished splitting into different segments, you can then upscale your 480i (interlaced) footage to 720p (progressive) or even 1080p (progressive) for importing into iMovie. The quality of the upscaling is amazing; again leveraging on the power of the GPU. iMovie does not take advantage of the level 3 GPU acceleration. That's something FCPX can do, but it's a much more expensive software. VideoProc is free until this end of April as part of their secret promotion, or you can buy it for $30 sale promotional price and have an infinite update license. The free license does not allow you to update the software further, but for $30 I think after the free license you can upgrade it to infinite license. I'm using the free license with their latest 2019 update and I LOVE this software. The infinite license is to support future GPUs down the road for even faster video processing.
 
Thanks for all the replies, I have split up about 10 videos with quickTime and its been going much easier. I never knew I could do that with QuickTime and still learning about the split function, it seems like a neat use that there isn't a lot of documentation for.

I finished all the Hi8 tapes and phase II is the mini DVD's, fortunately I can convert them with an external DVD and handbrake, but need an easier way to split up the clips at the chapter markers. The camera software places a chapter at the beginning of each new clip, wish there was an automated way to cut up the clips at the chapter points.

I will take a look at VideoProc.
 
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Just a quick update....

I tried VideoProc, it probably has a lot of things going for it, but it doesn't make a video file with multiple clips in to separate files any easier than quick time.

It does have some cool effects and conversion tools, but splitting a video clip to multiple smaller ones is still a pain.
 
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