Stuff I Like: How to get your Digital 8 tapes onto YouTube
6LINKS BELOW! There are a lot of ways to save your digital 8 tapes (these little guys: http://www.clickclickzone.co.uk/images/pages/tapes.gif) to YouTube so they can be around forever. This is a basic tutorial about how I do it.
1) Locate a camcorder. I have the Sony DCR-TRV520 ( http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/model-home.pl?mdl=DCRTRV520 ) and the Panasonic model PV-DV520 ( http://shop.panasonic.com/shop/model/PV-DV52 ) -- you can buy these on Ebay if you need to.
2) Get the appropriate cordage. I use a firewire to go from my cam to my PC, but you might need to buy both the cord and the firewire port. Like this one: http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?p=BK-F5U526S&c=fr&pid=a6d121ddb0a2f0aa87f8c0ff9ca34058cebe8d0a303cf50c70a3a55af79f70b2&gclid=CMW2iZOFmbgCFVEV7Aod0G0Asw -- Just do a search.
3) I use Windows Movie Maker from an old Vista machine that has a firewire card installed. I prefer this version of WMM because it has more options than the latest versions that come with 7 or 8. Still, finding software should not be hard, but the key is to make sure the cam is compatible with your hardware.
4) Import all of your tapes. Once imported, break them up into sections if you need to. I have tapes that have a rock show, joking around at a part or any other activity on the tape. I break them up as I export them in WMV files.
5) Upload the files to YouTube.
6) Use this help file to get the right formatting tags. Most likely you will need the 4:3 one, like this: yt:stretch=4:3 ... you simply put it into the tags section when you are editing a video. If you are not sure where to get to this screen, go to your video manager and click the EDIT button next to the video. Here is a sample video that does NOT use the tag: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRHBckTl4AU
...and one that does: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qse3Oh1pDGY
7) That should leave you with 4:3 resolution digital YouTube-d copies of your vids! You can also download copies from YouTube, but I basically save the WMV files to Google drive when I am done. I keep multiple copies of everything.
Good luck!