does anyone use HT 12D / HT 12 E before?

I'm currently doing a project involving transmission. I have to send 8 bits parallel data and encode it to serial data in order to send the data to transmitter and vice versa for receiver part. However, I couldn't find any 8 bits decoder ic in Msia. So, I'm now planning to use HT 12d ( 4 data line ). I did some research and get to know that HT 12 D can be used to send 12 bits data, but I don't know how? Can somebody please help? If i want to use two 4 bits encoder to send 8 bits data, how can I do it?