Importing old 8mm tapes

I did a search on this forum and found some answers but I wanted to post something a little more specific to my situation.

My family purchased a Sony video camera back in the 80's. It's takes 8mm tapes and it comes with a little converter pack that let's you hook up the camera directly to the TV via coaxial cable or those red/white/yellow RCA plugs.

What I'd like to do is take our library of 8mm tapes and make DVD's out of them with menus and the whole nine yards.

So what's the best way to get these videos onto my iMac? I read a bit about Elgato but I heard some rumblings of "iffy" reviews. Are there any alternatives that are better?

I've got one of these for importing VHS and 8mm tapes, works like a charm

That looks good!

Just as an aside, how much HD space do these 8mm tapes eat up? I know it probably depends on quality settings etc but is there a general rule of thumb?

I've got a 320GB drive in the iMac and a 500GB external so I should be good.

I've got a 500GB external and I've saved several movies so far in raw form. Once I get done editing them and transferring them to DVD, I can delete the raw footage to make space for more tapes.

I think a single, two hour tape took up somewhere between 10 and 20GB of space.

Kash said:

I've got one of these for importing VHS and 8mm tapes, works like a charm

Click to expand...

So I can plug up a vhs to that then to my pc/mac?

Yep. Then just fire up iMovie or whatever video editing program you have and it'll detect the box. Hit play on the VCR and then hit Import in the program and you're set.