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eBay listings, cross-referencing old/outdated websites- feel very overwhelmed!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.