I of course know about but didn't mention Sony's range of Digital8 Handycams and Video Walkmans which can convert analog Video8 and Hi8 tapes and external analog video sources into digital form via FireWire, because they're far more expensive (both when new and on the used market today), most computers don't have a FireWire port anymore, and that's a topic which deserves its own in-depth video.
I think people who have laptop with TB3/4 or USB4 can use those Apple dongles (TB3 to TB2 and TB/TB2 to FireWire) to get those DV/Digital8 camcorders work with modern laptop
@@phonghai87 sadly they removed FireWire backwards compatibility with the ARM transition. Only Intel Macs can make use of those Thunderbolt to FireWire dongles
Came here to comment that I specifically bought a Sony DCR-TRV480E to transfer all Video8, Hi8 and Digital8 tapes with it. The seller was asking €100 back in 2019, which was a bit steep for my liking, but during the pandemic I managed to make some money but transferring some video cassettes, including some Hi8 ones. Since then I sold all my Intel Macs, so I’ll either be using my PowerMac G4 for capturing or get a cheap used Mac mini for the job.
I just installed pci-e firewire card into my pc and was able to capture hi8 tapes even on my modern win 10 pc. You still can buy a new pci-e firewire cards from China and they are quite cheap
I know firewire is dead but I would be quite happy to have a firewire port on my 2021 laptop. Especially for multi-channel input audio interfaces that are better quality than their USB counterparts.
Oh no way! My father bought this exact same model brand new back in 2003! I remember connecting the video out to our huge Samsung CRT in the living room and messing around with the digital effects and also abusing the fade button when I was given the opportunity to record some parts of our vacations. I don't think ours came with a USB cable, as we had to "export" video using our Sharp VCR. I also remember loving using the Title feature that would slowly scroll text in the middle of the recording.
I've settled on the following for archiving my tape-based home videos: MPEG-2 files conforming to the DVD specs captured using the Dazzle DVD Recorder HD (essentially the same hardware as the Dazzle DVC 100 shown in this video) for my VHS home videos played via the JVC HR-S9911U S-VHS VCR with TBC/DNR. DV AVI for 8mm/Hi8 played on a Digital8 camcorder with TBC/DNR (I believe it was a DCR-TRV480). DV AVI digital clone capture from Digital8 & MiniDV, retaining the tape's date/time/data metadata. MPEG-2 .m2t clone capture from HDV, retaining the tape's date/time/data metadata.
It’s true. When you send money to some random stranger on patreon or whatever, how do you know what they spend it on? I do love watching various TH-cam videos but I’m not gonna pay someone to do it! You can tell Vwestlife does it for love, not glory and clicks and likes.
@@imansfield too many people turn their TH-cam hobby into a career and lose the love for it in the process. Most aren't using that Patreon money for better production values, that is their paycheck to live off.
@@JaredConnell But what happens when the views and likes dry up, which happens to all youtubers eventually? Its not a sustainanable career, but good luck to them I suppose.
I have the Samsung VP-L800 which is very similar to this bar the USB capabilities and has the stereo microphone I think (and is PAL for the UK of course). Still have the original receipt that shows it was bought from a Dixons in 2004 for around £100 IIRC. Still works fine bar the video/audio combined output not having working video (S-Video is faultless). Can still record and the battery still works rather well even though it appears to be non-genuine. I should shoot more footage and get it uploaded haha. Captured my family videos off the Hi8 tapes without a hitch using an original HDPVR over S-Video. That only cost me £25 to get compared to the crazy amounts that any Hi8/Digital8 camera with a USB or Firewire port gets on eBay. It's good enough and I've got them in time rather than them never leaving the medium.
Ah the nostalgic sound of a Hi8 camcorder's head drum running. The video quality of the USB capture isn't that bad, but the laggy, out of sync audio and proprietary video codec is a dealbreaker. One of the reasons I've switched to using an HDV camcorder for my videos is to have tangible backups. Sure it _could_ be inconvenient having to capture a tape in real-time before you can do anything with the video, but that's a compromise I'm willing to make. It's not THAT big a deal, since I'm not doing any kind of time-sensitive mission-critical professional video work. Also, this video is quite reminiscent of your camcorder reviews from many years ago which were what first introduced me to your channel. Nice to see a new "old" video on Hi8!
Hi8 is great, so is DV and FireWire! These types of cameras are still quite nice to use. As soon as I saw USB with a 2000s camcorder, it immediately reminded me of your video about Sony USB Streaming. Interesting to see the differences between Sony and Samsung. As expected, better to just use FireWire if you have the option or just a dedicated AV capture solution. The only downside is that the tapes aren’t being sold like they were before, but at least they do last when taken care of.
The easiest way to make vintage software like this work on a modern PC is with a hypervisor like Virtualbox. You create a virtual machine which allows you to specify the processor speed, amount of RAM, HDD size, etc and then install Windows XP on it as if it was an actual PC. It essentially allows you to run another operating system from within your current OS. Since the hardware is virtual you can always allocate more resources to the virtual machine to get the performance you need (the FPS issues you had for example) that's something you can't do with physical hardware.
Another excellent video. Your videos always make me stop whatever I'm doing and immediately watch them. You have the gift of making everything interesting.
I keep a 2012 Mac mini around for analogue video capture purely because it was the last generation of mini that had native FireWire. I connect my analogue video source to the analogue video input of my almost-20-year-old Panasonic DV camcorder, and that digitises the video in real time and sends it to the computer via FireWire. There's no DV tape stage involved, which is handy. I'm using FCP7 on the Mac mini to do the actual video capture. It's obsolete tech, but it just works, and the quality of the captures is so much better than any of those USB converters, because DV is only 5:1 compression and it properly captures interlaced video.
I'm floored as to why Samsung even offered the 640x480 option in their software when literally no computer of the time, or even the next several years, could handle transferring it.
With digital tapes I think it's good idea to transfer them sooner rather than later, in case of miniDV or Digital8, when you capture raw DV video (which is around 20mbit/s I think) you get exactly what is on the tape and there will always be tools like ffmpeg to convert it to newer supported codecs for sharing etc. My Digital8 collection is around 500GB and I have it saved in multiple places and still have the original tapes, some of which already had problems reading and I had to capture them multiple times, in 10-20 years they'll play much worse, if at all.
@The Vinyl Disguise Seems Sony had a thing to make CD fail-proof as much as possible. The PS1 was a king in therms of playing horrible rotten pirate games as if it was nothing. It would just load a bit slower. I remember seeing one of my friend's games and putting it against the sun, and wondering how in heck it played that, it was like blocking the sun with a sieve.
@The Vinyl Disguise I have 23 year old Imation disks with Christmas music I downloaded from Napster that I listen to every year. I think those disks will outlive me.
@The Vinyl Disguise I've never had any optical disc fail, my first blue dye CD-R's scan perfectly. II have had one example of a no-name disc bronzing, it looked terrible. I have recently found out about how some common mold spores find them quite tasty so its important to clean them and keep then dry, which is what we are told to do with any media.
@The Vinyl Disguise Thats where I think I'm doing well, the fact I only ever used Verbatim and other brands in a similar segment. My Verbatim CD-R and DVD-R, the oldest of which are over 20 years old, show no significant increase in error rates. This leaves most errors corrected by stage 1 and few by stage 2. Humidity would only go above 60% during summer, they rarely see the light.
Always awesome to see another camcorder video! The unit itself seems pretty good for an analog only model, but USB is nothing more than a marketing word. It sounds cool in theory, but it simply just doesn’t hold up compared to FireWire. Interesting to see it does support a higher resolution compared to other camcorders with USB, but combine that with the file format that is difficult to deal with, FireWire on a 2000s Mac (or similar machine) is still the way to go. Great video!
"tapes are my archive". I agree. Same with my film and DVD recordings I've made off TV etc. My tapes however are aging, thus many have been backed up to DVD or BD-R. I still have a lot more to do.
I had the same problems as you with dropped frames when trying to archive old video tapes. I lucked out and was able to borrow my grandfathers stand alone DVD video recorder from the mid 2000's. I recorded the tapes to a DVD and ripped the DVD's to the computer. Results were great and now I have the original tapes, an archive DVD as well as the files. I would look for one of those.
Digital8 was Sony's entry-level digital camcorder format, so they gave their Digital8 Handycams lower-resolution image sensors than their MiniDV camcorders. But the recording format itself is identical to MiniDV.
For me in this era, really wanted a MiniDV camcorder capable in ingesting composite video direct to the camera. Was shooting a lot on BetaSP and editing on PC.
I've a Sony DCR-TR8000E (PAL) with a modified Firmware on it. It's a Digital 8 camera, supporting Hi8 & Video8 Playback (and digitizing). It uses the Firewire Port & Standart Protocols, so good, that it even works on my Windows 10 64 Bit, WITHOUT any extra drivers or special prorietary Software. The camera also support realtime digitizing from any analogue AV Sources (by using the Video-Out Port). Even connecting my camera to a MiniDV using Firewire (4 Pin - 4 Pin cable), I can use my MiniDV Camera's Viewfinder to view what the other camera sees. (and also vice-versa)
I'm pretty sure no firewire camcorders require drivers, likewise many DVRs had a firewire socket for cameras so compatibility had to be very good. I'm guessing yours was one of the UK models that originally had inputs disabled to avoid the recorder tax? Fortunately that was never an issue here, so we got the same PAL models but never with inputs disabled.
What the mod does, all camcorders with iLink port a.k.a firewire can output video from tapes if it's equiped with analog tape playback via both analog and digital outputs, and all passthrough video from input to output if it has two sets of analog inputs and outputs and not just one that is used for both input and output.
@@DoubleMonoLR I bought the camera in Luxembourg (I'm luxembourger) ... - but it's the same: it's due the tax. - Later I bought a cable & a software to change the firmare, and enabled it then. (including other options in the menu)
Looking forward to you doing an episode on DV tape, cameras and Firewire. I spent many years recording with professional grade DV cameras and Firewire equipped hard drives and Mac computers and it was a great format.....until solid state became affordable. Out with the old and in with the new. In 2001 who would have thought a "phone" would become the predominate video recording device.
I couldn't agree more with you, with regards to your statement about archiving video from tapes. Tapes, even through are fragile (the media itself), tend to last a really long time, while what was supposed to be more reliable and long-lasting like CDs and DVDs, aren't. I have CDs from the early 90s which were very well pressed that are now presenting disc rot, making the media look like Swiss cheese. Funny enough, my father had recorded compact cassettes during the 80s, and those tapes weren't used from the 90s (when my father bought a CD player for the home and also a car radio) until I found them in a box. Believe or not, they're sti working as well as back in the day. Archiving on tape is just much more reliable than most people think, and the weak point in doing this, would probably be more on the camcorder/VCR side of things, because or wear and age. Have your tapes as the primary backup and a digital copy as secondary backup is the way to go.
Tapes degrade over time because of the magnetic fields from the layers interfering with each other. Most of the defective CD-Rs are of low-quality; the high-quality discs are usually still good. Regardless, everybody should do their best to try to back up everything they can to SSDs which are the least risky media at this time (they're not perfect and can fail, but they have no moving parts and aren't susceptible to magnets).
I completely understand the idea about not digitizing tapes. Mathematically, there is going to be loss of quality when transferring anything over from an analog waveform to digital bits; it's just what happens. Tapes are completely fine for archival purposes so as long as you store them right, just like any other piece of physical storage. The only reason I digitize my tapes is for the sole purpose of sharing what I have online, they stay on the tape otherwise. I wish was an ideology that was more prevalent, as oppose to digitizing to "save your memories from fading away."
It's actually possible to record the magnetic fluctuations almost directly from the head drum and reconstruct the video in software. This yields the best possible quality since it bypasses all of the conversion steps the signals go through for the normal output as well as any subpar ADCs, but unfortunately there's still a rather large price and skill barrier, but that should go down in time. (See the Domesday86 VHS-Decode project). I would say this DV output is the next best thing, quality-wise, since those cheap capture sticks often like to make a mess of the signal or compress the video or forcibly deinterlace it in a subpar manner, and these camcorders just have a better build quality in general. Very nice of -Sony- Samsung to implement this feature. edit: no wait, this is some weird USB thing, oops. Not a fan of that proprietary MJPEG codec.
Based on the Domesday Laserdisc recovery project I assume, it dos the same but with the LD drive's laser signal. Insane stuff, pretty impressive. Another thing I've looked into was doing multiple captures, and averaging the errors out, and cancelling messed up frames that way. I almost went that route with some of our home Video8 tapes, I just couldn't handle dealing with playing that camera on a perfectly finicky sideways angle, after letting it heat up only enough, open frame cause if you close it it just dies, after fiddling with the alignment screws far too long for each session. Oh and the capture card I use is a PCI one that requires me to remove my graphics card to use it with the sound card as well. Fun stuff...
I used a wide range of video capture software back in the early 2000s. The one I settled on for my Intel Celeron 1200 computer with Hauppauge WinTV FM PCI capture card was AVI_IO v03.24, a tiny program with a very low CPU / RAM footprint and lost very few if any frames at DVD resolutions / bitrates, using MJPEG codec set to 18 quality.
I'm so done with Hi8 Video Tapes. Just converted my Hi8 tapes from my childhood back in 2018. Using the EasyCap USB Video Capture Device (0:20) and my old Sony Hi8 Camcorder also from 2002. Shortly after that, my Sony camcorder stopped working. It just won't play properly, and it will only play for few seconds then it refuses to play. Sold it back in 2020. I'm lucky I've converted my tapes before it broke. Yes, I made the right decision to still keep the original Hi8 tapes intact despite I already have a digital copy, just in case. Thanks for the video, Kevin. :)
Well I see the struggle STILL exists when it comes to archiving our old minidv/hi8 tapes! I remember years ago using one of those video capture devices on an older laptop to digitize, and it took FOREVER and would often fail at some point when doing so.
I had similar camcorder and boy did I _haaaate_ it. I loved my simple Sony TRV818 but it finally died and since it was under warranty Best Buy had to replaced it I got a Samsung model and it always felt cheap. And had no night vision. I think it was like 267.99 before tax.
Intresting, and enlightening. For the purpose of backing up tapes to a digital file, I would recommend using the Sony DCR TRV-480, if you can grab one, and given you can ged a hold of a machine with a working Firewire connection. I have a dual-core, w10 HP/Compaq 6710b which may be too slow for some ppl, but it does the job. Installing the legacy FW driver may be tricky as w10 has dropped support for FW but now I can capture my tapes directly from the camera. No lag, full 29.97 fps, and also, the perks: The camera can read Hi8 tapes (Digital8 is native), either 4:3 or 16:9 ratios (although the latter is kind of not 16:9, really), it's stereo, and you can use the A/V output as input, so if you happen to have a VCR, you can connect it to the camera and capture. I use it with Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 12, which is also kind of old, but it works for me.
@@vwestlifeinteresting. I only got a quick look at it through the lens of the viewfinder. Trying to think of that would have a tiny CCFT backlight or white LEDs I suppose were gaining in that time
Another excellent and informative video, VWestlife, and it's yet another reason why I scoff at so much garbage produced for cable TV these days when there are so many terrific videos, TH-cam channels, and content creators like you that offer far better information and/or are far more entertaining in so many ways. All the best and keep up the great work. :)
I've recently-ish archived all my DV tapes via Firewire but I'm now a bit stuck at trying to get the best possible maximum quality while converting them to something like MP4. I tried Handbrake and the Decombing and all, but afterwards stitching them together without again having to convert them is where I'm stuck. Something like "Lossless Cut" does work when packing them into a MKV, but the slightly different resolutions from different cameras tend to throw some video players off. And I would love to use Chapters as names for each tape and what's going on in them which I did manage with that program, but the resolution is still a bit of a problem.
Thats the exact camera my mum had in the early 2000s just without the usb, then i got some use of it and its been brilliant to make goofy silly videos, eastern europe was very slow to adapt new tech. Ive looked at the manual allot which showed an option of usb and absolutely drooled over that thought of having it, 15 years down the line, i now know how useless it actually was, thanks!
8:01 reminds me of the misbehaving DVD player we had (there was some sort of electronic fault with it where it would sometimes open and then immediately close again)
Ha.. I’ve got this camera on my shelf, technically an scl810.. but it’s the same from what I can tell. Still even has all the same stickers! Was my first camcorder back when I was 14 or so. Been meaning to pick up some cables and a charger for it!
That almost looks like the quality of video used by Legacybox. They may not have used that exact setup, but they may have used hardware with similar electronics contained within. Also, KITTY! 💜
I had no idea they still made analog camcorders as late as 2002. I recall having a Sony MiniDV Handicam that had the "net video streaming" over USB feature. Never figured out what it was supposed to be for - it looked so much worse than a normal Firewire transfer.
There are eight different analogue camcorders in the 2003 Argos (large U.K. retailer) catalogue including a normal 8mm and a VHS-C one. They are all in the bargain basement category though with the cheapest 8mm Samsung being £220, compared to £400 for the cheapest Mini-DV camcorder (a JVC) and £700 (new lower price) for one of those Palmsized JVCs. The Sony Digital 8 ones are halfway between starting at £380.
There are miniDV and D8 camcorders that used USB to stream DV signal albeit with occasional drop outs since USB 2.0 bandwidth is limited, Pinnacle also made devices that take a firewire video source and stream it via USB port using special drivers that emulated firewire, I posted a capture made that way using Pinnacle 500-USB to capture a D8 tape. But that's not the point of this video since it features an analog camcorder not digital.
I didnt even know there was such a thing as a RGB bitmap codec. You'd think they would use raw YUV or something instead, or maybe just write out the raw WJPG stream from the Winbond chip. Very weird. I'm in the process of capturing my old Hi8 tapes, but using the S-Video + Audio analog streams, which I think does a pretty good job paired with a decent playback and capture device. Ideally one that probably has stereo though. lol
I'd guess it was due to converting from mjpeg - it would be simple to convert each frame of an mjpeg video to bitmap, weirdly pointless though. Perhaps they were just too cheap to pony up for an mjpeg codec for the pc.
Really great video. I picked up a working Panasonic Palmcorder PalmSight (PV-L69) today from the Goodwill and it has a Camera to Serial Port. The date on it is 2001. I have to find a Camera To Serial port cable to test it out. Which will probly be a trip to find.
From one pedant to another, I’d call “art” a posterisation effect rather than a solarisation one :p certainly solarised film could be coloured after the fact to somewhat resemble posterisation, but it retained its extreme contrast and silhouetting effects, which posterisation lacks!
@@vwestlife it’s of course not really important, hence the preface lol. Without looking at examples of that effect, Sony probably did a Fender (who called vibrato “tremolo”, annoying many musical pedants) with their naming. Or possibly the Sony effect hews closer to how actual solarisation looks!
There were many hi8 camcorders of the 2000s that were equipped with FireWire allowing you to connect to a computer and in real time import footage into your favorite video editor. Of course modern computers don’t use FireWire but you can get a FireWire to usb. I had one of the Sonys and back in the day imported footage via FireWire. I even used the camera to import all my 8mm analog cassettes of me when I was a baby from the early 90s and it worked flawlessly even includes the audio when using FireWire. Hope this helps. I also believe the Sony 8mm player only devices also had FireWire.
6 Mbit/s with analog audio send separately in 2002 is pitiful, considering that USB 2.0 was released in 2000 and offered High Speed mode. If this camcorder was released one year later, Samsung could have taken advantage of UVC protocol. Some late MiniDV camcorders have implemented USB 2.0 / UVC, making it possible to capture DV video over USB instead of using Firewire.
My brother had the non USB version. We tried using it for skateboarding. I still have a few of the hi 8 tapes in a shoes box of footage. Wouldn't be bad ripping them to the computer
When you scoff at people who tell you to archive your tapes into digital format, I don't think they are talking about some weird proprietary/intermediate format. Most capture devices (well, it really depends on the capture device) encode to an intermediate format (e.g. AVI) that is meant to be edited in an NLE prior to final encoding in a delivery format for playback. MPEG2 was and still is the delivery codec of choice for SD video and DVDs. My guess is the software that comes with the Samsung camcorder has some sort of export to DVD or MPEG2 option for delivery which is supported by VLC and easily playable on a modern PC. And I doubt MPEG2 compatibility will ever be an issue in the future. It's too much of a de facto standard.
I'm guessing you've played around with increasing the bitrate in ML? Love some old Canon hardware running Magic Lantern. Keeps my T3i and 7D useable still! 📷
Assuming you mean the bitmap capture, bitmap is completely uncompressed (not even lossless compression) so a high bitrate was inevitable. The actual mjpeg data sent from the camera will be a much lower bitrate though of course.
In 2019 i went down the rabbit hole of finding which old VHS to DVD device had a build in time based correction circuit that i could use to digitalize and archive all my video8. Thanks god i did it (during the fist runs of the 2020 lockdowns). Without some sort of TBC converting VHS or video8 is simply impossible.
It's not though, many tapes work on capture devices just fine without one. Passing through a TBC can degrade the image(as it's converting to & from digital) when there's no problem with the tape. Obviously it can help a lot with other tapes though.
My hero knocks it outta the park again! ❤🌈 I've always wondered what that USB port was for. OMG you were able to explain it in minutes! Any chance it could be modded to support full resolution video and sound output for Win 11 and captured to H.264 MPEG4??
I've archived all my hi8 and digital 8 tapes using the av rca out to a standalone DVD burner and it works great 👍 . I use the Sony Handycam DCR-TRV103 from 1999 and the Sylvania DVD recorder model ZC320SL8B from 2007 . All tapes are now on DVD's which can be played on any DVD player and have also been copied to PC hard drives to archive them for editing.
I ended up doing something very similar - after spending £100s on capture cards which never seemed to work properly (although that might have been down to the Celeron 500 PC). Years later I found a Hauppauge Card which does work O.K. in a Core I3 PC.
You're losing quality when you do that, especially with the Digital8 handycam which can transfer both formats easily to a PC with a firewire cable and will result in noticeably better quality. But any capture is better than not having them archived at all...
If you get a cheap used brand name(Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, Pioneer etc) DVD recorder instead, a firewire/'DV' socket was common on those. I've got 3 standalone Panasonic DVD & DVD/HDD recorders, all have a firewire socket. Even a Sanyo VHS-DVD recorder I have has the socket (some other DVD VHS models I have don't though) Plug in a firewire cable and you can get the best image from the Digital8 camera, aside from the usual compression to put it on DVD. From memory I think the firewire connection means it's even easier as setting up to record can automatically start the camera playing etc. The brand name models may well also have better capture quality & integrated TBC(to stabilize the image) than the Sylvania/Funai recorder.
The best way in my experiments to capture analog video from Hi8 8mm or digital8 is via FireWire into the computer and for VHS and other broadcast formats like 3/4” Umatic and betacam etc is by using an Aja analog to SDI converter box fed into a SDI recorder like a blackmagic SDI recorder and capturing the files uncompressed and deintetlacing them and transcoding them to .MOV or MPEG4 etc. The USB capture sticks aren’t the best approach in my opinion. Also most Sony Hi8 and digital8 camcorders made in 1998 and onwards have a TBC which helps in capturing video from analog 8mm/Hi8 tapes usually fixes the wavy affects and shaky video. The playback on newer late 90s Sony camcorders (usually with TBC/DNR) is considerably better than the older early to mid 90s sony video8 or Hi8 handycams and yes most older Sony handycams and other brands of early 90s camcorders suffer from leaking capacitors. The Samsung camcorders don’t have as sharp of a playback of tapes as the Sony HI8 and digital8 camcorders.
Fantastic demo on analog video to PC transfer, I am wondering is that a mini USB & not a firewire? I ordered a Sony VCR Digital8 player/recorder with a i-link “firewire" port but does not resemble a mini USB. I however have purchased in advance a video capture conversion device with a firewire to USB A to anticipate transfering of my 80's & 90's Hi8 tapes, but I only have a Windows 11 PC.
I have L905D lol it doesn't have a light and USB port but it does have a cut-out in the same place, and it's pretty much the same camera body-wise. I am using a good DVR to capture and record videos from Hi8/VHS, first to DVD-R disk then with Handbrake on PC takes some time but it works for me and I am getting out good quality
When I converted some old Hi8 tapes using a USB device a few years ago, I had major issues. I did some research and found that purchasing a device called a Time Base Corrector removed all problems. Along with a high quality capture card, the process was seamless. Have you ever used a "TBC" vWestlife?
Analog 8mm tapes were never suited for USB capture, I’ve always used S-Video capture to FireWire for those tapes, especially I have vacation and wedding videos from the 90s recorded from a Sharp camcorder! Digital8 and MiniDV are the only video tape formats I would directly capture from USB since they’re not analog!
You don't/can't capture Digital8 & MiniDV from USB, except for degraded USB streaming. You *copy* the data using firewire. I've personally got an external device that can convert firewire to USB2, but they're not common.
@@DoubleMonoLR USB is only the output to the computer from the analog video source, since most computers phased out FireWire in the late 2000s and focused on improving USB performance. I only had one computer from the early to mid 2000s that had a FireWire port it was a Sony VAIO PC with windows XP that let me plug directly from a MiniDV camcorder via FireWire in college. I did lots of video projects in college with DV tapes and used Windows Media Center for editing and publishing videos on DVDs!
For transfering analog formats I use a Dazzle with VirtualDub64, for stuff like MiniDV I bought an internal PCI-e FireWire card. Both have to be done on my Windows 7 machine as I couldn't get these methods to work on my Windows 10 machines.
I use Firewire transfer with a Canopus ADVC Capture device and my old Lacie firewire card to transfer from analogue video. I needed to change the Windows 10 firewire driver to one that works with video which is available on Microsoft's website. I then use WinDV software for capture. It all works perfectly on the latest Windows 10 64 build (as of time of writing). I was able to edit these perfectly in Adobe Premier Elements 2021.
- It didn't work in Windows 10 because the drivers are only 32-bit. Lots of devices became e-waste due to lack of 64-bit drivers. - The problem with the file isn't the driver, it's the codec. You should be able to use FFMPEG or something on the XP system to transcode it to a standard format that works everywhere. (Maybe you can rip and install the codec to the Win10 system.) - Tape is not a good archive media because the signal degrades over time due to magnetic interference between the layers.
1. Get a camcorder with DV out (Firewire) 2. Hook it up to some random 15 year old laptop with firewire or get an LG DVD recorder with DV in 3. Archive your movies easily in high quality
I have two of those USB capture devices and both of them have issues. One is a videosafe cameramate and the video is low quality and audio is muffled. My other one the ion video to PC does work but has ghosting but is immune to macrovision, so is the other one. I plugged the ion device into my PC recently and my PC had a fit. I will be looking for a stand alone recording device like those clearclick recorders that pop up on amazon but they are expensive.
Yeah, I've got the EasyCap (or an eBay Chinese knock-off of it). It's, um, not great, not great at all. I also have an HDMI USB capture device from eBay and it too is Chinesium "quality". Sometimes you get what you pay for, sometimes you get even less. 😒
@@I.____.....__...__ I'd like to eliminate the PC from doing the heavy lifting (encoding) of the video and have a dedicated device do the encoding. Problem with that is if it obeys macrovision and refuses to record.
The output S-Video from a Digital-8 Sony camera is also an input, and you can use any analogue source like a VCR to record video from the Firewire output of the Digital-8 camera.
You can always run it through Vmware by sending it as a USB device. Also, I'm not 100% certain of this, but..... I think 32-bit windows 10 can accept XP drivers
Don't get me started about Sony's USB Streaming. I remember my family getting a DCR-TRV340 and I tried to connect it to our computer and it was incredibly useless for what I wanted to do with it. I managed to convince my parents to take me to the computer fair (I don't know if they were a thing outside Australia) and get a FireWire card.
In my case I bought a Canon MV 750i that I used in the 2000's which had an analog passthrough inputting audio stereo and composite video or s-video and outputting DV video which went to the firewire card of an old windows 7 PC, through an old 2003 software called WinDV, I think, very simple software, but excellent results for capturing VHS and even S-VHS, without any frame dropping. I assume that the analog pass circuitry has some sort of TBC implemented, because some VHS tapes I had, which were quite degraded, transferred very well onto DV. If you can find one of this, or similar , and a laptop or PC with win 7 and firewire input , this is the way to go. Forget all this crappy POS USB dongles, I ve used some of them with very bad results.
I of course know about but didn't mention Sony's range of Digital8 Handycams and Video Walkmans which can convert analog Video8 and Hi8 tapes and external analog video sources into digital form via FireWire, because they're far more expensive (both when new and on the used market today), most computers don't have a FireWire port anymore, and that's a topic which deserves its own in-depth video.
I think people who have laptop with TB3/4 or USB4 can use those Apple dongles (TB3 to TB2 and TB/TB2 to FireWire) to get those DV/Digital8 camcorders work with modern laptop
I'll look forward to that Kevin :)
@@phonghai87 sadly they removed FireWire backwards compatibility with the ARM transition. Only Intel Macs can make use of those Thunderbolt to FireWire dongles
Came here to comment that I specifically bought a Sony DCR-TRV480E to transfer all Video8, Hi8 and Digital8 tapes with it. The seller was asking €100 back in 2019, which was a bit steep for my liking, but during the pandemic I managed to make some money but transferring some video cassettes, including some Hi8 ones.
Since then I sold all my Intel Macs, so I’ll either be using my PowerMac G4 for capturing or get a cheap used Mac mini for the job.
I just installed pci-e firewire card into my pc and was able to capture hi8 tapes even on my modern win 10 pc. You still can buy a new pci-e firewire cards from China and they are quite cheap
I wish more people knew about firewire and it's DV capabilities, it was so nice to just hook it up and record it to your computer
I know firewire is dead but I would be quite happy to have a firewire port on my 2021 laptop. Especially for multi-channel input audio interfaces that are better quality than their USB counterparts.
@@joman66 thunderbolt + the apple firewire adapter cables does a good job.
@@prebenjaeger it even works on laptop with tb3/4 or USB4
I had a set-top DVD recorder with firewire. Literally one button press and it would transfer an entire tape. 👍🏻
firewire was fantastic for video. if you had the right software, you could control the camera from the edit system like it was a remote vtr.
Oh no way! My father bought this exact same model brand new back in 2003! I remember connecting the video out to our huge Samsung CRT in the living room and messing around with the digital effects and also abusing the fade button when I was given the opportunity to record some parts of our vacations. I don't think ours came with a USB cable, as we had to "export" video using our Sharp VCR. I also remember loving using the Title feature that would slowly scroll text in the middle of the recording.
I've settled on the following for archiving my tape-based home videos:
MPEG-2 files conforming to the DVD specs captured using the Dazzle DVD Recorder HD (essentially the same hardware as the Dazzle DVC 100 shown in this video) for my VHS home videos played via the JVC HR-S9911U S-VHS VCR with TBC/DNR.
DV AVI for 8mm/Hi8 played on a Digital8 camcorder with TBC/DNR (I believe it was a DCR-TRV480).
DV AVI digital clone capture from Digital8 & MiniDV, retaining the tape's date/time/data metadata.
MPEG-2 .m2t clone capture from HDV, retaining the tape's date/time/data metadata.
I just recorded my friend's 30th birthday party with a 1990s Camcorder yesterday. :D It was fun.
Your channel proves that you don't need to beg for large amounts of money to produce good content.
I wish more creators would think like that.
It’s true. When you send money to some random stranger on patreon or whatever, how do you know what they spend it on? I do love watching various TH-cam videos but I’m not gonna pay someone to do it! You can tell Vwestlife does it for love, not glory and clicks and likes.
@@imansfield too many people turn their TH-cam hobby into a career and lose the love for it in the process. Most aren't using that Patreon money for better production values, that is their paycheck to live off.
@@JaredConnell But what happens when the views and likes dry up, which happens to all youtubers eventually? Its not a sustainanable career, but good luck to them I suppose.
I respect the accuracy and real down to earth info. loved him debunking the turbo button misinformation that's been constantly spread around.
@@imansfield Some, maybe most of them decline that way, but I think some youtubers do the hard work to keep their subscribers.
i hope Spencer had a good Christmas
I have the Samsung VP-L800 which is very similar to this bar the USB capabilities and has the stereo microphone I think (and is PAL for the UK of course). Still have the original receipt that shows it was bought from a Dixons in 2004 for around £100 IIRC.
Still works fine bar the video/audio combined output not having working video (S-Video is faultless). Can still record and the battery still works rather well even though it appears to be non-genuine. I should shoot more footage and get it uploaded haha.
Captured my family videos off the Hi8 tapes without a hitch using an original HDPVR over S-Video. That only cost me £25 to get compared to the crazy amounts that any Hi8/Digital8 camera with a USB or Firewire port gets on eBay. It's good enough and I've got them in time rather than them never leaving the medium.
A new VWestlife video is a perfect way to start the day
Ah the nostalgic sound of a Hi8 camcorder's head drum running.
The video quality of the USB capture isn't that bad, but the laggy, out of sync audio and proprietary video codec is a dealbreaker.
One of the reasons I've switched to using an HDV camcorder for my videos is to have tangible backups. Sure it _could_ be inconvenient having to capture a tape in real-time before you can do anything with the video, but that's a compromise I'm willing to make. It's not THAT big a deal, since I'm not doing any kind of time-sensitive mission-critical professional video work.
Also, this video is quite reminiscent of your camcorder reviews from many years ago which were what first introduced me to your channel. Nice to see a new "old" video on Hi8!
Hi8 is great, so is DV and FireWire! These types of cameras are still quite nice to use. As soon as I saw USB with a 2000s camcorder, it immediately reminded me of your video about Sony USB Streaming. Interesting to see the differences between Sony and Samsung. As expected, better to just use FireWire if you have the option or just a dedicated AV capture solution. The only downside is that the tapes aren’t being sold like they were before, but at least they do last when taken care of.
Spencer: *Glares in judgement at human who dares disturb his nap*
The easiest way to make vintage software like this work on a modern PC is with a hypervisor like Virtualbox. You create a virtual machine which allows you to specify the processor speed, amount of RAM, HDD size, etc and then install Windows XP on it as if it was an actual PC. It essentially allows you to run another operating system from within your current OS.
Since the hardware is virtual you can always allocate more resources to the virtual machine to get the performance you need (the FPS issues you had for example) that's something you can't do with physical hardware.
Another excellent video. Your videos always make me stop whatever I'm doing and immediately watch them. You have the gift of making everything interesting.
I keep a 2012 Mac mini around for analogue video capture purely because it was the last generation of mini that had native FireWire. I connect my analogue video source to the analogue video input of my almost-20-year-old Panasonic DV camcorder, and that digitises the video in real time and sends it to the computer via FireWire. There's no DV tape stage involved, which is handy. I'm using FCP7 on the Mac mini to do the actual video capture. It's obsolete tech, but it just works, and the quality of the captures is so much better than any of those USB converters, because DV is only 5:1 compression and it properly captures interlaced video.
Ah the Dazzle 100. Workhorse of the late 2000’s AV capture world. Still have mine!
Awww kitty!! Unexpected cat pictures are always a welcome addition to any YT video 😊
I'm floored as to why Samsung even offered the 640x480 option in their software when literally no computer of the time, or even the next several years, could handle transferring it.
With digital tapes I think it's good idea to transfer them sooner rather than later, in case of miniDV or Digital8, when you capture raw DV video (which is around 20mbit/s I think) you get exactly what is on the tape and there will always be tools like ffmpeg to convert it to newer supported codecs for sharing etc. My Digital8 collection is around 500GB and I have it saved in multiple places and still have the original tapes, some of which already had problems reading and I had to capture them multiple times, in 10-20 years they'll play much worse, if at all.
@The Vinyl Disguise Seems Sony had a thing to make CD fail-proof as much as possible. The PS1 was a king in therms of playing horrible rotten pirate games as if it was nothing. It would just load a bit slower. I remember seeing one of my friend's games and putting it against the sun, and wondering how in heck it played that, it was like blocking the sun with a sieve.
@The Vinyl Disguise Were any of those old failing CDRs Memorex brand?
@The Vinyl Disguise I have 23 year old Imation disks with Christmas music I downloaded from Napster that I listen to every year. I think those disks will outlive me.
@The Vinyl Disguise I've never had any optical disc fail, my first blue dye CD-R's scan perfectly. II have had one example of a no-name disc bronzing, it looked terrible. I have recently found out about how some common mold spores find them quite tasty so its important to clean them and keep then dry, which is what we are told to do with any media.
@The Vinyl Disguise Thats where I think I'm doing well, the fact I only ever used Verbatim and other brands in a similar segment. My Verbatim CD-R and DVD-R, the oldest of which are over 20 years old, show no significant increase in error rates. This leaves most errors corrected by stage 1 and few by stage 2. Humidity would only go above 60% during summer, they rarely see the light.
This video is very interesting I miss this era of camera with video tapes. Thanks for bringing me in the past
Always awesome to see another camcorder video! The unit itself seems pretty good for an analog only model, but USB is nothing more than a marketing word. It sounds cool in theory, but it simply just doesn’t hold up compared to FireWire. Interesting to see it does support a higher resolution compared to other camcorders with USB, but combine that with the file format that is difficult to deal with, FireWire on a 2000s Mac (or similar machine) is still the way to go. Great video!
"tapes are my archive". I agree.
Same with my film and DVD recordings I've made off TV etc. My tapes however are aging, thus many have been backed up to DVD or BD-R. I still have a lot more to do.
Narrator: Spencer was, in fact, not having a merry Christmas
I had the same problems as you with dropped frames when trying to archive old video tapes. I lucked out and was able to borrow my grandfathers stand alone DVD video recorder from the mid 2000's. I recorded the tapes to a DVD and ripped the DVD's to the computer. Results were great and now I have the original tapes, an archive DVD as well as the files. I would look for one of those.
Digital8 was a format I skipped over. 10/1 compression like MiniDV but the edge smoothing / stair stepping was noticeable.
Digital8 was Sony's entry-level digital camcorder format, so they gave their Digital8 Handycams lower-resolution image sensors than their MiniDV camcorders. But the recording format itself is identical to MiniDV.
For me in this era, really wanted a MiniDV camcorder capable in ingesting composite video direct to the camera. Was shooting a lot on BetaSP and editing on PC.
I've a Sony DCR-TR8000E (PAL) with a modified Firmware on it. It's a Digital 8 camera, supporting Hi8 & Video8 Playback (and digitizing). It uses the Firewire Port & Standart Protocols, so good, that it even works on my Windows 10 64 Bit, WITHOUT any extra drivers or special prorietary Software. The camera also support realtime digitizing from any analogue AV Sources (by using the Video-Out Port).
Even connecting my camera to a MiniDV using Firewire (4 Pin - 4 Pin cable), I can use my MiniDV Camera's Viewfinder to view what the other camera sees. (and also vice-versa)
I'm pretty sure no firewire camcorders require drivers, likewise many DVRs had a firewire socket for cameras so compatibility had to be very good.
I'm guessing yours was one of the UK models that originally had inputs disabled to avoid the recorder tax?
Fortunately that was never an issue here, so we got the same PAL models but never with inputs disabled.
What the mod does, all camcorders with iLink port a.k.a firewire can output video from tapes if it's equiped with analog tape playback via both analog and digital outputs, and all passthrough video from input to output if it has two sets of analog inputs and outputs and not just one that is used for both input and output.
@@DoubleMonoLR I bought the camera in Luxembourg (I'm luxembourger) ... - but it's the same: it's due the tax. - Later I bought a cable & a software to change the firmare, and enabled it then. (including other options in the menu)
Looking forward to you doing an episode on DV tape, cameras and Firewire. I spent many years recording with professional grade DV cameras and Firewire equipped hard drives and Mac computers and it was a great format.....until solid state became affordable. Out with the old and in with the new. In 2001 who would have thought a "phone" would become the predominate video recording device.
I couldn't agree more with you, with regards to your statement about archiving video from tapes. Tapes, even through are fragile (the media itself), tend to last a really long time, while what was supposed to be more reliable and long-lasting like CDs and DVDs, aren't. I have CDs from the early 90s which were very well pressed that are now presenting disc rot, making the media look like Swiss cheese. Funny enough, my father had recorded compact cassettes during the 80s, and those tapes weren't used from the 90s (when my father bought a CD player for the home and also a car radio) until I found them in a box. Believe or not, they're sti working as well as back in the day.
Archiving on tape is just much more reliable than most people think, and the weak point in doing this, would probably be more on the camcorder/VCR side of things, because or wear and age. Have your tapes as the primary backup and a digital copy as secondary backup is the way to go.
Tapes degrade over time because of the magnetic fields from the layers interfering with each other. Most of the defective CD-Rs are of low-quality; the high-quality discs are usually still good. Regardless, everybody should do their best to try to back up everything they can to SSDs which are the least risky media at this time (they're not perfect and can fail, but they have no moving parts and aren't susceptible to magnets).
I completely understand the idea about not digitizing tapes. Mathematically, there is going to be loss of quality when transferring anything over from an analog waveform to digital bits; it's just what happens. Tapes are completely fine for archival purposes so as long as you store them right, just like any other piece of physical storage.
The only reason I digitize my tapes is for the sole purpose of sharing what I have online, they stay on the tape otherwise. I wish was an ideology that was more prevalent, as oppose to digitizing to "save your memories from fading away."
It's actually possible to record the magnetic fluctuations almost directly from the head drum and reconstruct the video in software. This yields the best possible quality since it bypasses all of the conversion steps the signals go through for the normal output as well as any subpar ADCs, but unfortunately there's still a rather large price and skill barrier, but that should go down in time. (See the Domesday86 VHS-Decode project).
I would say this DV output is the next best thing, quality-wise, since those cheap capture sticks often like to make a mess of the signal or compress the video or forcibly deinterlace it in a subpar manner, and these camcorders just have a better build quality in general. Very nice of -Sony- Samsung to implement this feature.
edit: no wait, this is some weird USB thing, oops. Not a fan of that proprietary MJPEG codec.
Based on the Domesday Laserdisc recovery project I assume, it dos the same but with the LD drive's laser signal.
Insane stuff, pretty impressive.
Another thing I've looked into was doing multiple captures, and averaging the errors out, and cancelling messed up frames that way. I almost went that route with some of our home Video8 tapes, I just couldn't handle dealing with playing that camera on a perfectly finicky sideways angle, after letting it heat up only enough, open frame cause if you close it it just dies, after fiddling with the alignment screws far too long for each session.
Oh and the capture card I use is a PCI one that requires me to remove my graphics card to use it with the sound card as well. Fun stuff...
"Hey come back here! What! It's closing by itself!" Best VWestlife quote by far.
Spencer was thoroughly impressed by the look on his face... :P
I used a wide range of video capture software back in the early 2000s. The one I settled on for my Intel Celeron 1200 computer with Hauppauge WinTV FM PCI capture card was AVI_IO v03.24, a tiny program with a very low CPU / RAM footprint and lost very few if any frames at DVD resolutions / bitrates, using MJPEG codec set to 18 quality.
Spencer just dgaf. Good cat.
I'm so done with Hi8 Video Tapes. Just converted my Hi8 tapes from my childhood back in 2018. Using the EasyCap USB Video Capture Device (0:20) and my old Sony Hi8 Camcorder also from 2002.
Shortly after that, my Sony camcorder stopped working. It just won't play properly, and it will only play for few seconds then it refuses to play. Sold it back in 2020. I'm lucky I've converted my tapes before it broke.
Yes, I made the right decision to still keep the original Hi8 tapes intact despite I already have a digital copy, just in case. Thanks for the video, Kevin. :)
Order a Head Cleaner for Hi8 it should play fine
Well I see the struggle STILL exists when it comes to archiving our old minidv/hi8 tapes! I remember years ago using one of those video capture devices on an older laptop to digitize, and it took FOREVER and would often fail at some point when doing so.
I had similar camcorder and boy did I _haaaate_ it. I loved my simple Sony TRV818 but it finally died and since it was under warranty Best Buy had to replaced it I got a Samsung model and it always felt cheap. And had no night vision. I think it was like 267.99 before tax.
My Sony 4:3 Trinitron TV had a 16:9 mode and looked really sharp when I played back something recorded that way.
Spencer has a cute, pink nose. 🙂
I believe Spencer had the appropriate devil-may-care attitude.
Intresting, and enlightening. For the purpose of backing up tapes to a digital file, I would recommend using the Sony DCR TRV-480, if you can grab one, and given you can ged a hold of a machine with a working Firewire connection. I have a dual-core, w10 HP/Compaq 6710b which may be too slow for some ppl, but it does the job. Installing the legacy FW driver may be tricky as w10 has dropped support for FW but now I can capture my tapes directly from the camera. No lag, full 29.97 fps, and also, the perks: The camera can read Hi8 tapes (Digital8 is native), either 4:3 or 16:9 ratios (although the latter is kind of not 16:9, really), it's stereo, and you can use the A/V output as input, so if you happen to have a VCR, you can connect it to the camera and capture. I use it with Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 12, which is also kind of old, but it works for me.
5:41 I love that. Such a bright little CRT.
It's actually a monochrome LCD.
@@vwestlifeinteresting. I only got a quick look at it through the lens of the viewfinder. Trying to think of that would have a tiny CCFT backlight or white LEDs I suppose were gaining in that time
@@cyndicorinne It has a fluorescent backlight.
RIP Spencer. He was a good kitty.
That is why xp is the best is for older hardware
Another excellent and informative video, VWestlife, and it's yet another reason why I scoff at so much garbage produced for cable TV these days when there are so many terrific videos, TH-cam channels, and content creators like you that offer far better information and/or are far more entertaining in so many ways.
All the best and keep up the great work. :)
Those where the days.
I've recently-ish archived all my DV tapes via Firewire but I'm now a bit stuck at trying to get the best possible maximum quality while converting them to something like MP4. I tried Handbrake and the Decombing and all, but afterwards stitching them together without again having to convert them is where I'm stuck. Something like "Lossless Cut" does work when packing them into a MKV, but the slightly different resolutions from different cameras tend to throw some video players off. And I would love to use Chapters as names for each tape and what's going on in them which I did manage with that program, but the resolution is still a bit of a problem.
14:45 the cash register sound effect activated my eBay senses and I momentarily reached for my phone 😅
Thats the exact camera my mum had in the early 2000s just without the usb, then i got some use of it and its been brilliant to make goofy silly videos, eastern europe was very slow to adapt new tech. Ive looked at the manual allot which showed an option of usb and absolutely drooled over that thought of having it, 15 years down the line, i now know how useless it actually was, thanks!
8:01 reminds me of the misbehaving DVD player we had (there was some sort of electronic fault with it where it would sometimes open and then immediately close again)
Ha.. I’ve got this camera on my shelf, technically an scl810.. but it’s the same from what I can tell. Still even has all the same stickers! Was my first camcorder back when I was 14 or so. Been meaning to pick up some cables and a charger for it!
That almost looks like the quality of video used by Legacybox. They may not have used that exact setup, but they may have used hardware with similar electronics contained within.
Also, KITTY! 💜
"Spencaaahhh" the Italian Mafia cat is going to put a hit out on you for exposing him on the intaaahnet. 😅
I've got a handful of 90s/00s camcorders. I'll never get rid of them. I also have two Betamax VCRs, but I need to have the belts replaced on them.
I had no idea they still made analog camcorders as late as 2002.
I recall having a Sony MiniDV Handicam that had the "net video streaming" over USB feature. Never figured out what it was supposed to be for - it looked so much worse than a normal Firewire transfer.
There are eight different analogue camcorders in the 2003 Argos (large U.K. retailer) catalogue including a normal 8mm and a VHS-C one. They are all in the bargain basement category though with the cheapest 8mm Samsung being £220, compared to £400 for the cheapest Mini-DV camcorder (a JVC) and £700 (new lower price) for one of those Palmsized JVCs. The Sony Digital 8 ones are halfway between starting at £380.
Sony made analog Hi8 Handycams until 2007! I remember still seeing them in stores in 2008.
There are miniDV and D8 camcorders that used USB to stream DV signal albeit with occasional drop outs since USB 2.0 bandwidth is limited, Pinnacle also made devices that take a firewire video source and stream it via USB port using special drivers that emulated firewire, I posted a capture made that way using Pinnacle 500-USB to capture a D8 tape. But that's not the point of this video since it features an analog camcorder not digital.
@@vwestlife I must've had blinders on - 2008 is the year I started migrating to Bluray and sold off my DVD recorder.
I didnt even know there was such a thing as a RGB bitmap codec. You'd think they would use raw YUV or something instead, or maybe just write out the raw WJPG stream from the Winbond chip. Very weird. I'm in the process of capturing my old Hi8 tapes, but using the S-Video + Audio analog streams, which I think does a pretty good job paired with a decent playback and capture device. Ideally one that probably has stereo though. lol
I'd guess it was due to converting from mjpeg - it would be simple to convert each frame of an mjpeg video to bitmap, weirdly pointless though. Perhaps they were just too cheap to pony up for an mjpeg codec for the pc.
Well Spencer is a delight and Merry Christmas from me to him to 😊👍🏻
Really great video. I picked up a working Panasonic Palmcorder PalmSight (PV-L69) today from the Goodwill and it has a Camera to Serial Port. The date on it is 2001. I have to find a Camera To Serial port cable to test it out. Which will probly be a trip to find.
Merry Christmas Spencer.... Spencer.... Spencer! ANYONE GONNA EAT!?!?!?
I do LOVE your channel.
You going to VCF this weekend?
From one pedant to another, I’d call “art” a posterisation effect rather than a solarisation one :p certainly solarised film could be coloured after the fact to somewhat resemble posterisation, but it retained its extreme contrast and silhouetting effects, which posterisation lacks!
Sony Handycams call the same effect "solarize", so that's the term I used.
@@vwestlife it’s of course not really important, hence the preface lol. Without looking at examples of that effect, Sony probably did a Fender (who called vibrato “tremolo”, annoying many musical pedants) with their naming. Or possibly the Sony effect hews closer to how actual solarisation looks!
There were many hi8 camcorders of the 2000s that were equipped with FireWire allowing you to connect to a computer and in real time import footage into your favorite video editor. Of course modern computers don’t use FireWire but you can get a FireWire to usb. I had one of the Sonys and back in the day imported footage via FireWire. I even used the camera to import all my 8mm analog cassettes of me when I was a baby from the early 90s and it worked flawlessly even includes the audio when using FireWire. Hope this helps. I also believe the Sony 8mm player only devices also had FireWire.
You're thinking of Digital8, which I discussed in the description and pinned comment.
@@vwestlife yeah probably. Sorry all those 8mm formats sorta blur together 🤣
I have one of these! Although it sadly doesn't have the USB port. Exactly the same, otherwise.
Spencer: Sunrise, Sunset
0:48 🤦♀️ wow. Good to point that out about that device.
6 Mbit/s with analog audio send separately in 2002 is pitiful, considering that USB 2.0 was released in 2000 and offered High Speed mode. If this camcorder was released one year later, Samsung could have taken advantage of UVC protocol. Some late MiniDV camcorders have implemented USB 2.0 / UVC, making it possible to capture DV video over USB instead of using Firewire.
My brother had the non USB version. We tried using it for skateboarding. I still have a few of the hi 8 tapes in a shoes box of footage. Wouldn't be bad ripping them to the computer
I did wonder why these seem desirable on ebay, that explains that 😊👍🏻
When you scoff at people who tell you to archive your tapes into digital format, I don't think they are talking about some weird proprietary/intermediate format. Most capture devices (well, it really depends on the capture device) encode to an intermediate format (e.g. AVI) that is meant to be edited in an NLE prior to final encoding in a delivery format for playback. MPEG2 was and still is the delivery codec of choice for SD video and DVDs. My guess is the software that comes with the Samsung camcorder has some sort of export to DVD or MPEG2 option for delivery which is supported by VLC and easily playable on a modern PC. And I doubt MPEG2 compatibility will ever be an issue in the future. It's too much of a de facto standard.
That is a pretty high bit-rate, even my old T2i with magic lantern is around 55Mbps.
I'm guessing you've played around with increasing the bitrate in ML? Love some old Canon hardware running Magic Lantern. Keeps my T3i and 7D useable still!
📷
Assuming you mean the bitmap capture, bitmap is completely uncompressed (not even lossless compression) so a high bitrate was inevitable. The actual mjpeg data sent from the camera will be a much lower bitrate though of course.
I think there were quite a few digital8 players that could play hi8/video8 over firewire
In 2019 i went down the rabbit hole of finding which old VHS to DVD device had a build in time based correction circuit that i could use to digitalize and archive all my video8. Thanks god i did it (during the fist runs of the 2020 lockdowns).
Without some sort of TBC converting VHS or video8 is simply impossible.
It's not though, many tapes work on capture devices just fine without one. Passing through a TBC can degrade the image(as it's converting to & from digital) when there's no problem with the tape. Obviously it can help a lot with other tapes though.
I wish you installed more of that crazy software on the cd. Otherwise cool videos thanks!
My hero knocks it outta the park again! ❤🌈
I've always wondered what that USB port was for. OMG you were able to explain it in minutes!
Any chance it could be modded to support full resolution video and sound output for Win 11 and captured to H.264 MPEG4??
Just wanting to put this out there that the maxell tapes are actually a darker green in person. On a camera it will sometimes appear black.
I've archived all my hi8 and digital 8 tapes using the av rca out to a standalone DVD burner and it works great 👍 .
I use the Sony Handycam DCR-TRV103 from 1999 and the Sylvania DVD recorder model ZC320SL8B from 2007 . All tapes are now on DVD's which can be played on any DVD player and have also been copied to PC hard drives to archive them for editing.
I ended up doing something very similar - after spending £100s on capture cards which never seemed to work properly (although that might have been down to the Celeron 500 PC). Years later I found a Hauppauge Card which does work O.K. in a Core I3 PC.
You're losing quality when you do that, especially with the Digital8 handycam which can transfer both formats easily to a PC with a firewire cable and will result in noticeably better quality. But any capture is better than not having them archived at all...
If you get a cheap used brand name(Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, Pioneer etc) DVD recorder instead, a firewire/'DV' socket was common on those. I've got 3 standalone Panasonic DVD & DVD/HDD recorders, all have a firewire socket. Even a Sanyo VHS-DVD recorder I have has the socket (some other DVD VHS models I have don't though)
Plug in a firewire cable and you can get the best image from the Digital8 camera, aside from the usual compression to put it on DVD. From memory I think the firewire connection means it's even easier as setting up to record can automatically start the camera playing etc.
The brand name models may well also have better capture quality & integrated TBC(to stabilize the image) than the Sylvania/Funai recorder.
@@snap_oversteer I agree and that's exactly my thoughts.... I wanted an archived copy even if it were of less quality.
@@DoubleMonoLR You definitely know your electronics. That model is a Sylvania/Funai DVD recorder.
The best way in my experiments to capture analog video from Hi8 8mm or digital8 is via FireWire into the computer and for VHS and other broadcast formats like 3/4” Umatic and betacam etc is by using an Aja analog to SDI converter box fed into a SDI recorder like a blackmagic SDI recorder and capturing the files uncompressed and deintetlacing them and transcoding them to .MOV or MPEG4 etc. The USB capture sticks aren’t the best approach in my opinion. Also most Sony Hi8 and digital8 camcorders made in 1998 and onwards have a TBC which helps in capturing video from analog 8mm/Hi8 tapes usually fixes the wavy affects and shaky video. The playback on newer late 90s Sony camcorders (usually with TBC/DNR) is considerably better than the older early to mid 90s sony video8 or Hi8 handycams and yes most older Sony handycams and other brands of early 90s camcorders suffer from leaking capacitors. The Samsung camcorders don’t have as sharp of a playback of tapes as the Sony HI8 and digital8 camcorders.
Fantastic demo on analog video to PC transfer, I am wondering is that a mini USB & not a firewire? I ordered a Sony VCR Digital8 player/recorder with a i-link “firewire" port but does not resemble a mini USB. I however have purchased in advance a video capture conversion device with a firewire to USB A to anticipate transfering of my 80's & 90's Hi8 tapes, but I only have a Windows 11 PC.
I have L905D lol it doesn't have a light and USB port but it does have a cut-out in the same place, and it's pretty much the same camera body-wise. I am using a good DVR to capture and record videos from Hi8/VHS, first to DVD-R disk then with Handbrake on PC takes some time but it works for me and I am getting out good quality
i dunno why i found the CD drive with a mind of its own so funny
When I converted some old Hi8 tapes using a USB device a few years ago, I had major issues. I did some research and found that purchasing a device called a Time Base Corrector removed all problems. Along with a high quality capture card, the process was seamless. Have you ever used a "TBC" vWestlife?
Yes, the Sony Digital8 Handycams I mentioned in the description and pinned comment have one built-in.
@@vwestlife Oh that's perfect. I didn't know they had them built-in 👌🏻
Analog 8mm tapes were never suited for USB capture, I’ve always used S-Video capture to FireWire for those tapes, especially I have vacation and wedding videos from the 90s recorded from a Sharp camcorder! Digital8 and MiniDV are the only video tape formats I would directly capture from USB since they’re not analog!
You don't/can't capture Digital8 & MiniDV from USB, except for degraded USB streaming. You *copy* the data using firewire.
I've personally got an external device that can convert firewire to USB2, but they're not common.
@@DoubleMonoLR USB is only the output to the computer from the analog video source, since most computers phased out FireWire in the late 2000s and focused on improving USB performance. I only had one computer from the early to mid 2000s that had a FireWire port it was a Sony VAIO PC with windows XP that let me plug directly from a MiniDV camcorder via FireWire in college.
I did lots of video projects in college with DV tapes and used Windows Media Center for editing and publishing videos on DVDs!
...Spencer was not impressed
For transfering analog formats I use a Dazzle with VirtualDub64, for stuff like MiniDV I bought an internal PCI-e FireWire card. Both have to be done on my Windows 7 machine as I couldn't get these methods to work on my Windows 10 machines.
Ah! VWestlife's beloved cat 🐈 😻 🐈⬛️ ❤
I use Firewire transfer with a Canopus ADVC Capture device and my old Lacie firewire card to transfer from analogue video. I needed to change the Windows 10 firewire driver to one that works with video which is available on Microsoft's website. I then use WinDV software for capture. It all works perfectly on the latest Windows 10 64 build (as of time of writing). I was able to edit these perfectly in Adobe Premier Elements 2021.
- It didn't work in Windows 10 because the drivers are only 32-bit. Lots of devices became e-waste due to lack of 64-bit drivers.
- The problem with the file isn't the driver, it's the codec. You should be able to use FFMPEG or something on the XP system to transcode it to a standard format that works everywhere. (Maybe you can rip and install the codec to the Win10 system.)
- Tape is not a good archive media because the signal degrades over time due to magnetic interference between the layers.
1. Get a camcorder with DV out (Firewire)
2. Hook it up to some random 15 year old laptop with firewire or get an LG DVD recorder with DV in
3. Archive your movies easily in high quality
I have two of those USB capture devices and both of them have issues. One is a videosafe cameramate and the video is low quality and audio is muffled. My other one the ion video to PC does work but has ghosting but is immune to macrovision, so is the other one. I plugged the ion device into my PC recently and my PC had a fit. I will be looking for a stand alone recording device like those clearclick recorders that pop up on amazon but they are expensive.
Yeah, I've got the EasyCap (or an eBay Chinese knock-off of it). It's, um, not great, not great at all. I also have an HDMI USB capture device from eBay and it too is Chinesium "quality". Sometimes you get what you pay for, sometimes you get even less. 😒
@@I.____.....__...__ I'd like to eliminate the PC from doing the heavy lifting (encoding) of the video and have a dedicated device do the encoding. Problem with that is if it obeys macrovision and refuses to record.
Nice wallpaper at 0:25 :)
The output S-Video from a Digital-8 Sony camera is also an input, and you can use any analogue source like a VCR to record video from the Firewire output of the Digital-8 camera.
I have a JVC MiniDV camcorder that can do that. It was only a feature on the top of the range models.
It is *sometimes* also an input, not all models support it(Sony or other brand). Likewise not all support playing/converting analog Hi8/8mm tapes.
Spencer looks pissed!
spencer did not seem to excited
You can always run it through Vmware by sending it as a USB device. Also, I'm not 100% certain of this, but..... I think 32-bit windows 10 can accept XP drivers
Don't get me started about Sony's USB Streaming. I remember my family getting a DCR-TRV340 and I tried to connect it to our computer and it was incredibly useless for what I wanted to do with it. I managed to convince my parents to take me to the computer fair (I don't know if they were a thing outside Australia) and get a FireWire card.
In my case I bought a Canon MV 750i that I used in the 2000's which had an analog passthrough inputting audio stereo and composite video or s-video and outputting DV video which went to the firewire card of an old windows 7 PC, through an old 2003 software called WinDV, I think, very simple software, but excellent results for capturing VHS and even S-VHS, without any frame dropping. I assume that the analog pass circuitry has some sort of TBC implemented, because some VHS tapes I had, which were quite degraded, transferred very well onto DV. If you can find one of this, or similar , and a laptop or PC with win 7 and firewire input , this is the way to go. Forget all this crappy POS USB dongles, I ve used some of them with very bad results.
8:04 LOL. The same thing happens to my CD-DVD reader. Since I don't use it much, the straps dry out and don't work well.
Spencer is great! :)
Love the kitties
I see that the optical drive on your Win 10 PC also has a "ghost" effect! 😜