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04-16-2021, 10:04 AM
DigiM8 DigiM8 is offline
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Hello digitalfaq,

I’ve made an account in order to ask for advice – and hopefully clear up my confusion!

I know posts like this are all too common, but I’ve been in browser tab overload for a week trawling the forums, looking on Youtube, comparing eBay listings, cross-referencing old/outdated websites- feel very overwhelmed!
The advice on here seems good, but I’m having trouble sifting through it – a lot of the guides/threads seem to be US/NTSC focussed (understandable as I believe many of you, including the digitalfaq staff, are in the US), whereas the PAL stuff seems more case by case.

The brief: I’m looking to archive a collection of analogue and digital media; about 20 8mm/Hi8 tapes, a few Digital8 tapes, some home recorded VHS tapes, and some commercially released VHS tapes (e.g Readers Digest, old Sheffield United videos etc).
{I’ll also potentially be working on some Super8 film in a few months’ time, but that’s out of scope for this post.}
My original leaning was towards connecting the analogue camcorders/VHS to a DV device with analogue passthrough, like a Sony DCR-HC90e, then capturing the DV output via Firewire on an older Dell PC (see below).
With further reading however, and noting that some of these tapes are 30 years old already, I would ideally like to capture the footage in a lossless format (likely AVI, Lagarith codec), keeping the captures as masters that I can then clean up if necessary/reencode for viewing and future reencoding when formats improve.

Location: UK (PAL)

Budget: Ideally less than £100, but could stretch to £150 ish if I really needed to

Current equipment

Computers:
  • Alienware 15 r3, Win 10, i7-7820HK, Nvidia GTX1070M & Realtek soundcard, 16GB RAM, 300GB ish HDD space, USB 3, Thunderbolt port
  • Dell Optiplex GX620, Lubuntu (could install different OS), Pentium D 2.8, 3.5GB RAM, 330GB HDD space, Blu-Ray/DVD RW drive, USB 2, Firewire PCI card, slots avail (pic of mobo/ports attached, mostly have laptops so desktop motherboards still a bit of a mystery to me)
  • Packard Bell iMedia s3730, Lubuntu, Intel Pentium J4205, Intel HD graphics & onboard sound, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD space, DVD+/-RW drive, USB3, one PCIe slot avail
Storage:
  • 25 25GB BDR discs
  • 25 8.56GB DVD+R discs
  • 6TB ish across several external drives
Cameras:
  • Unknown 8mm/HI8 camcorder belonging to Dad (can’t check til he brings it to me) – likely Sony – original recorder of the 8mm/Hi8 tapes
  • Sony DCR-TRV 265e Digital 8 camcorder (no analogue playback/passthrough capability that I know of) – original recorder of the Digital8 tapes
VCRs:
  • Unknown make/model VCR from Freecycle that I’m collecting on Saturday (requested before I found this site/VCR recommendations, so may not end up using it for capture unless it turns out to be a good deck or in bad condition)
Equipment that’s been on my radar
  • Sony DCR-HC or similar (for analogue passthrough/DV output)
  • Sony DCR-TRV330e or similar (for direct analogue playback with DV output, incl inbuilt TBC)
  • DVD recorder, possibly a Panasonic DMR-ES10/15, or a Sony RDR-HX870 (for TBC-lite frame correction or signal cleanup)
  • USB capture device (though haven’t found one that looks promising yet)
  • Internal capture card (depends on spec/ports in the Dell, not really sure what I need looking on eBay)
  • Decent S-VHS deck with inbuilt TBC (no particular models that I’ve looked at as yet)
  • Canopus ADVC-1000 (understand this would function similarly to a camcorder with passthrough, perhaps even not as well)

With the equipment I have already, and bearing in mind that I’m in the UK, what sort of equipment/workflow could I build with my budget to losslessly digitize my various tapes?

My budget is low enough that I don’t yet feel I can afford to experiment/buy things and see whether they work, so I’m hoping to make the right choices before I leap in. Should say though, my priority for the near future is going to be the 8mm/Hi8 camcorder tapes, so if my £100ish budget covers that but not VHS just yet, I can wait 6 months or so to start on the VHS.

At first, this is going to be a personal hobby – I know I could send them away to be done, but this is something I want to learn (plus I get full control over the process/resulting files). If it turns out that I enjoy the process and get some good practice/results, I may look into upping the budget at a later date and trying it as a small business myself.

And if you’ve got to this point – thank you for reading, and for any advice you have, and if you need any more info/clarification then just let me know.


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Last edited by DigiM8; 04-16-2021 at 10:47 AM.
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  #2  
04-16-2021, 09:49 PM
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lordsmurf lordsmurf is offline
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I've used PAL since the 90s (pre-digital), not just NTSC.

Those retail tapes likely have anti-copy.

As a newbie, don't try to do film, You will mess it up. Outsource that to a qualified reputable lab. Even I don't mess with film.

£150 is probably too low to do much of anything.

PC hardware is fine.
Win10 is often a problem, terrible OS for capturing.
Linux is worse.

The VCR is more likely to eat the tapes that play them back with quality. Don't test it with anything important.

ES10 will help with cleanup, but the actual DVD recording quality is terrible. Only use for passthrough. And that's going to eat the entire budget.

A bare minimum workflow, that won't transfer all the tapes (fail rate), is
non-TBC S-VHS deck > ES10/15 > cheap Dazzle/Canopus card
That will cost more than £150.

Quality not great, but it can get worse.

Too many people make bad assumptions about this being an easy business. It's not. A lot of capital investment is involved, and novices don't know what they don't know. It's so easy to drown in problems. DIY is one thing, business is another.

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- For sale in the marketplace: TBCs, workflows, capture cards, VCRs
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