Guido:
Do you plan/want to use your computer as an edit-station?
In other words, do you plan to DIGITIZE (with a frame-buffer) all your Hi8 stock footage onto your hard disk, manipulate it in Adobe Premiere (or comparable software editing product), then output back to tape?
Again, though, what about *audio* ?
To clarify, the workhorse of multimedia audio is PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) digital audio - the format used for editing all Audio CDs, DAT tapes, and most CD-ROMs. I am no audio expert; however, there are two variables for PCM - sample rate and bit rate.
"Sample rate" describes the number of samples per second in a recording (there exists a directly proportional relationship between the number of samples per second to higher fidelity frequencies: the upper frequency limit = [.5 * the sample rate].
"Bit rate" describes the size of the digital "word" which records the audio sample (i.e. - more bits yield a more dynamic range, in conjunction with a lower signal-to-noise ratio).
In most cases, both bit and sample rates represent multiples/divisors of the "CD Audio" format, which equals 44,100 samples per second of 16-bit samples; therefore, a file which is described as "11K, 8-bit" has a sample rate of 11,025 8-bit samples per second - and is 0.125 times the size of the same file at "CD Audio" rates.
For beginners/amateurs/industrial audio types, I recommend this audio solution:
"Digi 002 Rack — 2U Rackmountable FireWire Pro Tools LE Studio-in-a-Box"
...visible at Digidesign's website:
http://www.digidesign.com/
For (cuts-only and/or DVE) video editing, I recommend using your PC; this is the 21st Century, after all... hop on board!
Lights, Camera, ACTION!
:smoke: