New capture project, decyphering MediaInfo?

[klrosenberg]

Hi, my name is Ken.

First of all, I'm new to this forum for about 2 weeks. I've already read a ton of information about digital capture, aspect rations, equipment, you name it. I upgraded to Premium today (partially out of guilt based on how much great information I've already learned from your forum already). Plus I need a lot of specific assistance. I apologize in advance for the length of this post. There are hints at questions throughout, but for now, I have one important one at the end to resolve.

WHAT THE HECK GOING ON
My father took a lot of home movies from 1986 to 2013 using three types of camcorders. My goal is to convert some but not all of the following: 66 VHS, 46 8MM (not Digital 8), and 128 miniDV tapes.

OBJECTIVE
I have several conflicting goals:
• Decide upon and digitally capture the important moments, not all of them.
• Capture each tape "whole" then review through them later for content.
• Store / safely backup the videos.
• Share them with family members in a format they can view easily and isn't huge.
• And the MAIN conflict - continue living the last 20 years of my life while not spending it obsessed with converting and watching all these videos.

GETTING MY HANDS AROUND THIS
Towards that goal, I have already numbered and cataloged all the media into an Excel spreadsheet with comments including what the labels said were on the tapes, sortable by tape ID, Year, Month, Day, type of Format, my initial rating of A, B, or C, and lots of filters for "Grandkids", "Beach", "Weddings", "Relatives", "Anniversaries", "Folks-stuff only", etc. I plan to have my family review the listing and add their own ratings, then skim off the top.

MY STUFF
My environment has been Mac-based, and although I've been reading that PC is the way to go, I have very limited space in my house (no attic, no basement, and
a lovely wife that doesn't particularly like stuff sprawled about everywhere). I actually don't either. I'd like to somehow use my powerful iMac Pro, even if I can somehow run some of the Windows utilities in a Windows 10 VM Fusion virtual machine (if that's even possible). AVI card / Huff - I don't know if I can do this.

HARDWARE
iMAC Pro 2007 - quite hefty - running OS - Mojave (not upgrading until I get more answers about Quicktime and Codecs supported from here on)
• internal SSD, GRAID 24 TB (mirrored to 12 TB) for external storage
• Gdrive Mobile Pro 500 GB external thunderbolt 3 SSD for recording
• iMovie, Final Cut Pro X, Motion, Compressor, MediaInfo, VLC, Quicktime, Pro Tools, MPEG Streamclick (almost extinct), wish I could have Virtual Dub for the Mac (maybe in a VM), plan to install OBS, and Handbrake

PLAYERS (ugh)
• VHS - Toshiba W627 - Composite out only
• VHS - Panasonic AG 1960 - great deck but unfortunately - not playing properly. (Maybe needs cleaning or repair, but form the forum I now know that the AG 1980 is what I wish I had, since it has internal TBC. (sad emoji here). Maybe the 1960 isn't worth repairing.
• 8mm and Hi 8 - don't have one. I do have a Sony DCR-TRV140 Digital 8 Handycam but through the forum now realize this model only plays Digital 8 tapes
• miniDV player - Sony HandyCam DCR TV17 - working fine
• VHS Video Rewinder

CAPTURE EQUIPMENT
• Frankencable: i.Link (DV cable -> Firewire 400 -> 400 - 800 adapter -> 800-Thunderbolt 2 adapter -> Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 USB-C adaptor - can't believe it actually works, then found out from the forum that DV is a final format.
• [Don't be haters yet …] Elgato Video Capture as well as ClearClick 2.0 with latest firmware. Evaluation period runs out March 3rd. Wife assuaged my anguish by telling me just to keep both so I don't suffer from analysis paralysis while learning more about things from your forum. Besides, with over 200 tapes to consider I may want to quickly grab some of the "lesser" items / blurry VHS tapes in a way I can share with my family, while using better methods for the A items. They could also assist in locating the "nuggets", and reporting back the time locations for me to make a few "best of" compilations.
Question: Can I chop up lossy video into smaller chunks without causing another render? What if I piece it together minimally without any transitions, titles, etc.?
• Roxio Easy VHS to DVD 3 plus - a friend's parents gave this to me last weekend. Oh boy, now I'm learning about interleaving. Stores as .MOV files with MediaInfo reporting things like MPEG-4, Quicktime profile, AVC Video Codec, 720x480, and other stuff I don’t yet understand. Creates larger files, which I think is good. But Quicktime?

WHAT I've tried so far:
• Looking for players with TBC's that are somewhat affordable (think I missed the boat). Not much luck so far.
• Looking for external TBC's (remember I have both analog 8mm and VHS). Not much luck so far.
• Looking for 8mm analog camcorders
• Avoided LegacyBox type services.
• Asked local video transfer services how they do things. Based on their "not even S-Video answers", I'll say: pass.
• Lots of tests comparing Elgato against ClearClick for bulk import of the "lesser items". ClearClick actually produces "semi-watchable" results when using an S-video adapter connected to the yellow output cable of the VCR. The adapter was recommended and mailed to me by their support team. Don't know why it would work given an RCA signal, but I think their S-Video circuitry path is better. Passable when viewed 2/3rd size on a 27" iMac, probably looks terrible when played on an HDTV, but then again, so do most of the VHS tapes. Elgato (I know, El Crappo) might assist with the less-important miniDV's using the AVI camcorder outs without going through DV gyrations. Hence another reason why I'm probably keeping both. Waiting to hear any comments from you, but again, I have about 2 days left before my return notification period is over.
• Using handbrake for resolving Interleaved video from Roxio- I don't know "bob" from my uncle Bob, probably picked the wrong one but it's better than the dithered Elgato. I found a great video on how to use Virtual Dub to fix interleaving which I may try: How to convert VHS videotape to 60p digital video (NTSC) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn_TDa9zY1c&t=102s
• Testing really messed up videos that might require TBC to see how well Elgato and ClearClick handled them . Which brings me to my first question.

THE FIRST OFFICIAL QUESTION:
One of my comparison tests of Elgato vs ClearClick was to import a VHS from 1990 with several problems for the 1st minute of tape (audio starts out 1 octave lower, flickering screen, double-edit over a former recording) then 5 minutes more of video of the family at the beach.
• When I viewed both MP4 output files using Quicktime, the audio from both the Elgato and ClearClick output files stayed in sync at the end
• When using VLC on the iMac, the Elgato file stayed in sync, but the ClearClick file audio was delayed by at least 1/2 a second at the end.
• I then tried a 1 hour video of the same tape, but recorded starting from about 1 minute past all the tape's starting issues. Again, Quicktime worked fine when randomly moving through both output files, but VLC was even worse for the ClearClick file, maybe 5 to 10 seconds off by the 1st hour mark.

I played around a bit and discovered that if went to VLC's preferences + Input/Codec, and unchecked "Hardware Decoding", this fixed the 1 hour video sync issue when watching the ClearClick file. However, the 5 minute clip with the bad start still has delays near the end when jumping around with VLC.

By the way, I placed both output videos on a FAT32 thumbdrive and played.via my Sony HDTV using the "Videos" android app which comes installed on it. Again the Elgato clip stayed in sync when I skipped around through the video, but the ClearClick clip sync got messed up and sometimes the picture froze. If I played straight through from start to finish, the ClearClilck video seemed to work.

Attached is an image of the MediaInfo information for both captures. Can you explain what's happening here? I realize a TBC and other devices may need to be eventually required in the path, but why the drastic difference?

Thanks so much for bearing with this post. I look forward to interacting with you.

Regards,

Ken

Will this post be seen by Lord Smurf and the staff? Also, I haven't been able to figure out how to send a PM if that is actually needed. Can someone explain how? Thx

[klrosenberg]

Also, earlier I sheepishly wanted to avoid mentioning that my iMac has a Windows XP VM built on it. After reading that "older may be better" when it comes to transferring VHS tape, maybe this is actually a good thing. But it's ultimately on an iMac, not a tower with card slots. Let me know if there's any way around this.

[latreche34]

Capturing into MPEG4 on the fly is not a great idea, a lot of things can go wrong and will be baked in forever. Both clearClick and elgato are mediocre devices.

[klrosenberg]

Thanks. latrech34, I appreciate your reply. I already know from reading the forum that Elgato, ClearClick and mediocre products. As I mentioned in my post, I'm willing to make some sacrifices in order to process some of the huge amount of tapes I have, unless I can find a workflow which is similarly fast. Plus I can sent "dailies" to the family in a size that they can handle. But I only plan to use these for the lower-end tapes that aren't precious (to me).

As for the "A-items", I'm hoping to get further responses in how to approach this using the environment I have. I mentioned I can do DV, and tried feeding the VCR Video outs in passthrough mode through my miniDV recorder - I got no video signal for some reason. However after reading more in the forum last week, I paused this experiment, now understanding that DV is also a lossy format, and does a lot of color reduction.

Question 2: Does taking the AV outs of a miniDV will yield better quality than going through the i.Link interface and transferring the actual digital data to the computer?

[latreche34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by klrosenberg

Question 2: Does taking the AV outs of a miniDV will yield better quality than going through the i.Link interface and transferring the actual digital data to the computer?

Yes, using the analog outputs bypasses the DV encoder, But whether some picture stabilization will be applied in this analog passthrough or not is unknown, Manufacturers don't mention this feature, the only way to find out for sure is to try it.

Note that not all miniDV camcorders have passthrough feature as the connectors are used as inputs and outputs at the same time depends if the camcorder is in playback or recording mode, As far as I know only high end miniDV camcorders have this passthrough feature.

Also most members here including myself don't bother reading lengthy posts, so in the future make it as short as you can to get a response.

[msgohan]

It's not clear to me what "question 2" was asking. If the source is miniDV tape, the analog output will be lower quality than the i.Link/Firewire direct output.

[latreche34]

This proves my statement that most members don't read lengthy posts, The OP is capturing VHS tapes.

[klrosenberg]

Sorry if my original post was too long. Since I'm new in this forum I thought it would have been useful in my first post to list what equipment I had, what my intentions were, and some initial questions to avoid too many threads, but now I see that this was an incorrect strategy.

Should I post each question as a separate thread ? They are all about digital capture.

Also, how to you DM a specific person on this forum?

Thx

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by klrosenberg

Hi, my name is Ken.
First of all, I'm new to this forum for about 2 weeks.

Welcome.

Quote:

WHAT THE HECK GOING ON
My father took a lot of home movies from 1986 to 2013 using three types of camcorders. My goal is to convert some but not all of the following: 66 VHS, 46 8MM (not Digital 8), and 128 miniDV tapes.

Typical project.

Quote:

OBJECTIVE
I have several conflicting goals:
• Decide upon and digitally capture the important moments, not all of them.
• Capture each tape "whole" then review through them later for content.

Capture all, discard later. This is easier. Only discard on-the-fly if you run into a trouble tape that you don't want anyway. But take note, most people discover they want to keep it all, discard nothing. At worst, compress less desired footage best quality for important footage.

Quote:

• Store / safely backup the videos.

Standard backup policy applies: multiple media, multiple locations. Home, family house, friend house, work, safety deposit box, etc. HDD, DVD, "cloud".

Quote:

• Share them with family members in a format they can view easily and isn't huge.

DVD and/or streaming H.264

Quote:

• And the MAIN conflict - continue living the last 20 years of my life while not spending it obsessed with converting and watching all these videos.

This is actually easy to NOT do.

- obsession = Overly filtering already-good video that doesn't merit it. Example: video of a seasonal T-ball game, trying to fix every flaw in video and audio.

- NOT obsession = extracting the best quality possible from the tape

- wasting time = Farting around with cheap crap gear, stubborn about buying the gear that is known to give results. Buy it, use it, resell it.

- NOT wasting time = Reading, heeding the advice of people who have been doing this for decades. We're trying to help you, not sell you snake oil then disappear at the first sign of trouble.

Quote:

GETTING MY HANDS AROUND THIS
Towards that goal, I have already numbered and cataloged all the media into an Excel spreadsheet with comments including what the labels said were on the tapes, sortable by tape ID, Year, Month, Day, type of Format, my initial rating of A, B, or C, and lots of filters for "Grandkids", "Beach", "Weddings", "Relatives", "Anniversaries", "Folks-stuff only", etc. I plan to have my family review the listing and add their own ratings, then skim off the top.

Good job.

I still have my handwritten mini notebooks. I need to convert to spreadsheet myself, it'd be a heck of a lot easier to find stuff at times. Not that I have a lot of time to do my own videos, and not that I catalogued 100% of the tapes. <sigh>

Quote:

MY STUFF
My environment has been Mac-based, and although I've been reading that PC is the way to go, I have very limited space in my house (no attic, no basement, and a lovely wife that doesn't particularly like stuff sprawled about everywhere). I actually don't either. I'd like to somehow use my powerful iMac Pro, even if I can somehow run some of the Windows utilities in a Windows 10 VM Fusion virtual machine (if that's even possible). AVI card / Huff - I don't know if I can do this.

Mac only? And trying to get quality? Then you're pretty much screwed. Mac was never a video capture tool, but did have a few exclusion. (1) DV, yuck, lossy lossy, (2) certain USB cards, but only for 10.6 to 10.14, not after.

You cannot capture in a VM. Bare metal only.

Bootcamp can be an option.

But all is not lost. There are mini PCs, even smaller than a Mac Mini, that can capture decently, including Win10 (with the right card). I've setup systems like this for others. It actually took me quite a bit of time to get it working smoothly (at least for now), as Win10 fights you. I use my Win10 mini for audio. When that M2 Mac Mini comes out, I'll get one for video editing. Different tools for different purposes. No tool does everything.

Quote:

HARDWARE
iMAC Pro 2007 - quite hefty - running OS - Mojave (not upgrading until I get more answers about Quicktime and Codecs supported from here on)
• internal SSD, GRAID 24 TB (mirrored to 12 TB) for external storage
• Gdrive Mobile Pro 500 GB external thunderbolt 3 SSD for recording
• iMovie, Final Cut Pro X, Motion, Compressor, MediaInfo, VLC, Quicktime, Pro Tools, MPEG Streamclick (almost extinct), wish I could have Virtual Dub for the Mac (maybe in a VM), plan to install OBS, and Handbrake

If you stick to 10.14, there are a few decent cards, especially the Tevion ATI clone. And you use Videoglide for capture.

Do not use OBS. It's not analog capture software, but streaming "capture" (screen recording) software.

Quote:

PLAYERS (ugh)
• VHS - Toshiba W627 - Composite out only
• VHS - Panasonic AG 1960 - great deck but unfortunately - not playing properly. (Maybe needs cleaning or repair, but form the forum I now know that the AG 1980 is what I wish I had, since it has internal TBC. (sad emoji here). Maybe the 1960 isn't worth repairing.

That won't even well. Non-TBC NTSC Panasonic S-VHS players, not really worth fixing, no. Even the AG-1970 can be questionable to repair, not the best quality image even when working perfectly. That "6-head" (BS) Toshiba deck is passable, but it has various quality output issues. Consumer players suffered chroma offset/bleeding, oversharpen, and luma/gamma offset. I don't recall what that Toshiba has offhand, but it was at least one of those.

Quote:

• 8mm and Hi 8 - don't have one. I do have a Sony DCR-TRV140 Digital 8 Handycam but through the forum now realize this model only plays Digital 8 tapes

That model should play Hi8/V8, not just D8.

Noting that pure Hi8 will often be better than a D8, because D8 can DV encode all output, even the analog.

Quote:

• VHS Video Rewinder

Be wary. Most are too fast, can harm tapes.

Quote:

• [Don't be haters yet …] Elgato Video Capture as well as ClearClick 2.0 with latest firmware. Evaluation period runs out March 3rd.

Earned nicknames =
- Elcrapo (for video capture, their other items can be nice, I like my Wave:3 mic)
- CrapClick

Video butchery at it's finest.

Quote:

Wife assuaged my anguish by telling me just to keep both so I don't suffer from analysis paralysis while learning more about things from your forum.

Tell her that you're on to her advice. Because next time she can't make up her mind about shoes, she'll want both. If you say anything (or even if you don't), she'll throw this back at you: "Well, you know, you kept both of those video doodads that time." Over and over, for years. Joking, not joking.

Quote:

Besides, with over 200 tapes to consider I may want to quickly grab some of the "lesser" items / blurry VHS tapes in a way I can share with my family, while using better methods for the A items.

Bah, no. Those cards are overpriced junk. You can get better cards, less money spent. Bad logic here. Return. Known bad cards. Don't punish your eyes and ears with the (non)quality of those things.

Quote:

They could also assist in locating the "nuggets", and reporting back the time locations for me to make a few "best of" compilations.

Or maybe you run across a "one and done" type tape, and your only recording is now garbage.

Quote:

Question: Can I chop up lossy video into smaller chunks without causing another render? What if I piece it together minimally without any transitions, titles, etc.?

It fully depends on software. Bad news here, Mac has near-nothing (or nothing at all?) for you. Lossless editing software is (almost?) entirely a Windows task.

Quote:

• Roxio Easy VHS to DVD 3 plus - a friend's parents gave this to me last weekend. Oh boy, now I'm learning about interleaving. Stores as .MOV files with MediaInfo reporting things like MPEG-4, Quicktime profile, AVC Video Codec, 720x480, and other stuff I don’t yet understand. Creates larger files, which I think is good. But Quicktime?

No. More extremely low quality crap. The fact that you're having to even learn about interleave (audio sync) is a sure sign the card/software sucks.

Quote:

WHAT I've tried so far:
• Looking for players with TBC's that are somewhat affordable (think I missed the boat). Not much luck so far.

What is "affordable"? Put a number on that. But be warned. Too low a number, and you're in gambling or for-parts-only territory. Too many users want a good deck, then make the mistake of trying to underpay for it. So you end up wasting time and money on junk. Remember your own goals, ie not to waste time. Buy it, use it, resell it. The gear holds value.

Quote:

• Looking for external TBC's (remember I have both analog 8mm and VHS). Not much luck so far.

I'm about to put some more in the marketplace forum here.

Quote:

• Looking for 8mm analog camcorders

Easy task here. eBay has (thus far) been semi-safe on camcorders. What you must find is the original owner, and that took care of it, and not a recycler. An easy tell is it includes all accessories, even the camera bag. Ask questions: no kid use, how many videos made on it, where stored for past years, etc.

Quote:

• Avoided LegacyBox type services.

So many horror stories about that place. They try to bury it with seemingly fake "good" reviews.

Quote:

• Asked local video transfer services how they do things. Based on their "not even S-Video answers", I'll say: pass.

Too many of these "local" people wouldn't know quality video if they saw it. They use low-end junk, and you can do that yourself. Not that you should, or should want to. These greedy SOBs are honestly just ripping off customers, video quacks ruining the memories and quality of others. Though same goes for a few mills like LegacyBox. A lot of these places hire anybody, just a warm ass in a seat, and not anybody with actual video experience. Many owners see video as a quick buck, quality be damned.

Quote:

• Lots of tests comparing Elgato against ClearClick

Comparing dog turds to cat turds. Which is best? Who cares! Both are turds.

Quote:

Passable when viewed 2/3rd size on a 27" iMac, probably looks terrible when played on an HDTV,

Yep, that's it exactly.

Quote:

but then again, so do most of the VHS tapes.

False. VHS tapes are rarely as bad as folks think. The real culprit is the cheap VCR ruining the quality of the playback.

Quote:

• Using handbrake for resolving Interleaved video from Roxio- I don't know "bob" from my uncle Bob, probably picked the wrong one but it's better than the dithered Elgato.

Roxio sucks in more than one way, it seems. While technically allowed, "interleave" is not a synonym for "interlace". Usually interleave is about video/audio sync. Handbrake is miserable software to use, it doesn't understand aspects (often wrong choices), and the deinterlace options are ancient. You want Hybrid, using QTGMC. And it has many more quality options for encoding.

Quote:

I found a great video on how to use Virtual Dub to fix interleaving which I may try: How to convert VHS videotape to 60p digital video (NTSC) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn_TDa9zY1c&t=102s

That's a terrible video, and you'll be dumber from watching it. Wrong info there. This has been discussed many times in the forum. Forget everything there, you'll be on a path to screw up video.

Quote:

THE FIRST OFFICIAL QUESTION:

That whole issue is crappy cards, with no TBCs in the playback workflow. Nothing atypical there. It's a mix of bad encoding, and bad quality source. I don't want to get into the details here, on what and why. It really doesn't matter to the root cause: garbage in, garbage out.

Quote:

Will this post be seen by Lord Smurf and the staff? Also, I haven't been able to figure out how to send a PM if that is actually needed. Can someone explain how? Thx

Do not PM tech questions. At most, after several days, PM me a link to a post, ask for my input, Premium Members only. (Free Members, I'll see it when I see it.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by klrosenberg

Also, earlier I sheepishly wanted to avoid mentioning that my iMac has a Windows XP VM built on it. After reading that "older may be better" when it comes to transferring VHS tape, maybe this is actually a good thing. But it's ultimately on an iMac, not a tower with card slots. Let me know if there's any way around this.

Again, no VMs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by latreche34

Capturing into MPEG4 on the fly is not a great idea, a lot of things can go wrong and will be baked in forever. Both clearClick and elgato are mediocre devices.

"Mediocre" is being too kind. There's many other devices I'd consider mediocre, including DV boxes. No, these two exact items are total crap. I see no reason to be kind to bad objects.

Quote:

Originally Posted by klrosenberg

As I mentioned in my post, I'm willing to make some sacrifices in order to process some of the huge amount of tapes I have, unless I can find a workflow which is similarly fast.

Many, many things are better. If you want fast, even a DVD recorder will look better. No computer at all required these, just VCR and TBCs (and recorder).

Quote:

Question 2: Does taking the AV outs of a miniDV will yield better quality than going through the i.Link interface and transferring the actual digital data to the computer?

Yes and no. The optics and codecs of home camcorders sucked. So you don't truly have 720x480 resolve anyway. It can be hard to see a big different between analog capture, and DV "capture"/transfer. And then digital misses footage at breaks, while analog misses nothing. In theory, pure digital is better. In practice, not so simple.

Quote:

Originally Posted by latreche34

Also most members here including myself don't bother reading lengthy posts, so in the future make it as short as you can to get a response.

Premium Members get more leeway, at least for some posts. At least from Staff, from me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by msgohan

It's not clear to me what "question 2" was asking. If the source is miniDV tape, the analog output will be lower quality than the i.Link/Firewire direct output.

I think that was it.

But as I wrote: Better, yes. Better, no. Not a clear-cut binary.

Quote:

Originally Posted by klrosenberg

Should I post each question as a separate thread ? They are all about digital capture.

What you have here is a workflow post. So no. But future posts, as you get a workflow set, then yes.

[msgohan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by latreche34

This proves my statement that most members don't read lengthy posts, The OP is capturing VHS tapes.

OP also has miniDV tapes:

Quote:

Originally Posted by klrosenberg

My father took a lot of home movies from 1986 to 2013 using three types of camcorders. My goal is to convert some but not all of the following: 66 VHS, 46 8MM (not Digital 8), and 128 miniDV tapes.

[klrosenberg]

I'm am very honored and bow to you, Lord Smurf, first of all for creating, curating and caring for this forum for so many years, and second of all for taking the time to respond to me directly and in such detail.

After reading your post, I successfully got RMA's for returning both of the units that I previously bought (that shall no longer be named). You really raised my hopes that there's still a path for forward me in 2022 for transferring media in a proper way. I wasn't sure, because of how rare the appropriate items seem to be to find, and was going for the only solution I thought I had given my current Mac environment. You have piqued my interest with your suggestions of miniPC's, bootcamp, and even some Mac-based solutions.

I will be following up with more specific questions, and certainly am interested in the marketplace offerings. I'm willing to spend $'s on the right tools. I have to admit, I'm a bit nervous about how time-consuming this could be (considering my initial objectives), but I'm willing to give things a try. I know it's the right thing to do - I felt "dirty" during my initial trial period of the forementioned "unmentionables".

Thanks so much.

Regards,

-k

P.S. By the way, I meant "interlaced" when I typed "interleaved". Thanks for the correction.

[latreche34]

My previous answer assumes the OP is talking about VHS passthrough into a miniDV camcorder, If indeed his question was about miniDV tapes then the answer is clear capture via firewire to get the exact copy of the tape, Tape dropouts will affect both analog out and firewire alike.

[klrosenberg]

Quote:
• 8mm and Hi 8 - don't have one. I do have a Sony DCR-TRV140 Digital 8 Handycam but through the forum now realize this model only plays Digital 8 tapes
That model should play Hi8/V8, not just D8.

Noting that pure Hi8 will often be better than a D8, because D8 can DV encode all output, even the analog.


---

This is the info from Sony's support page:

Article ID : 00026520 / Last Modified : 07/23/2019
What models of Digital 8® camcorders cannot play tapes recorded in the analog 8mm or Hi8™ formats?
The following models of Digital 8® camcorders cannot play tapes recorded in the analog 8mm or Hi8™ formats.
• DCR-TRV130
• DCR-TRV140
• DCR-TRV250
• DCR-TRV260
• DCR-TRV265
• DCR-TRV280

From <https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00026519>

[latreche34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by klrosenberg

because D8 can DV encode all output, even the analog.

It doesn't make any economical sense or ease of design, A typical digital camcorder that can playback analog tapes will have the following signal path for analog tapes:

Analog outputs:
Video Heads > RF preamp > RF demodulator > ADC > Timing & digital processing > DAC > Analog output.

Firewire (iLink) output:
Video Heads > RF preamp > RF demodulator > ADC > Timing & digital processing > DV encoder > iLink output.

Now your theory:
Video Heads > RF preamp > RF demodulator > ADC > Timing & digital processing > DV encoder > DV decoder > DAC > Analog output.
Does this sounds like a viable option an electronic engineer would even think about?

>: Shared pin
ADC: Analog to digital converter
DAC: Digital to analog converter

[Hushpower]

Latreche, I don't read klrosenberg's "theory" that way at all.

To me, what they are saying is a D8 camcorder can convert everything, including Analogue, to DV.

I don't read any suggestion it's doing ADA.

[latreche34]

No, he specifically said all outputs including the analog, which suggests that the S-Video/composite out from a D8 is somehow was converted to DV prior to reaching the S-Video socket which involves DV encoding and decoding before the DAC. If he would've said to digital, then that would be true, because D8 don't have a 100% analog path due to the use of signal timing, DNR and digital processing, Hi8 can be 100% analog if it doesn't have TBC/DNR or the TBC/DNR is turned off.

[klrosenberg]

Hi. I certainly appreciate this discussion - I'm trying to follow along. My 2nd question (below) may be academic now, because I'm in the process of acquiring a much better VHS deck, however I'm curious.

Note: I have ~65 VHS, ~50 8mm and ~130 miniDV tapes. I won't be digitizing them all, but many of them.

Question 1 - miniDV tape conversion: I have a Sony Handycam DCR-TV17. Which is better, running a cable from the SonyHandycam's AV-(out) to my digitizing workstation or a cable from the DV-(out = i.Link) port to my digitizing workstation using my aforementioned "frankenCable", which adapts from firewire to thunderbolt 2 to thunderbolt 3 USB-C?

Question 2 - analog tape conversion (originally using a not-very-good VCR player): The Sony Handycam has a signal convert function (see the attachment), as well as the ability to record from a VCR. I don't know if this is possible, but can I feed the composite output of a VCR into the AV-in, set A/V -> DV OUT to ON in the HandyCam menu settings, and use the i.Link interface to record into my digital Workstation (basically converting the original analog signal to digital). I tried this and could only hear the audio, but saw no picture.

Which I guess is really one question -- Is capturing analog better than going through a DV interface, which I believe is a digital format, but also is a lossy digital format?

Thanks,
-k

[lordsmurf]

The DV is already lossy.

The digital transfer/"capture" can miss footage. For example, when the video was shot, if you pressed record right when grandma was saying "Happy Birthday", it won't be on the digital transfer. There's a lag. But it will be on the analog capture, because there's no lag at footage start. The happens anytime there was a cut, snow, or bluescreen. Lost footage. Just seconds. But sometimes seconds matter.

So it's never a simple choice. There are factors to consider.

Consumer camcorder optics sucked, so the idea of it being true 720x480 resolve is ridiculous anyway. It's a tad better than 500sx480 of s-video, but it's not a huge difference.

Also...

Using the D8 for Hi8/Video8 can compress to DV on output. Contrary to what was said above, it's not a guarantee. I've seen models go both ways. It's entirely determined by the camera interior workflow.

[latreche34]

That's weird, never had this happened to me before, Sclive always transfers the very first frame in the timecode for both miniDV and D8 tapes.

[lollo2]

Same here, capture of >100 miniDV tapes with SCLive over 3 years, Sony Windows 7 laptop with integrated Firewire and Dell Windows XP desktop with Pinnacle IEEE1394 PCI card