Video8 camcorder audio buzz fix!
 

I've taken a lot from this forum so I figured I'd post a quick trick I've found.

When I was recording from my trv-330 I had a bad buzz in the lower register. Before my current career I used to work as an installer in car audio and was able to instantly recognize it as a ground loop.

I know ground loop isolaters have been covered in previous forum posts, and that the problem can be minimized by using a UPS (though with dc power supplies in each device you'll still face a problem of ground loops)

However, ground loop isolaters are really just a frequency filter, the better solution has always been to make sure there is connectivity between the two devices to a common ground. In car audio we would fix them in a couple different ways. We would take the shielding from RCA's and connect to ground, but more commonly we would double check all the grounding wires to make sure they went to chassis ground.

I had horrible audio buzz and was able to fix it by simply running a wire from metal on the camcorder to metal on the case of my capture PC. I just used a speaker wire I had laying around and stripped the casing off the ends. My camcorder had a metal strap to use for a lanyard, which worked perfectly and I just unscrewed one of the case screws and put bare wire onto it then tightened it.

I have no idea how / if video was effected, but I think this discovery is probably the first in many that will make me restart the project from scratch.... oh well at least I was only two tapes in.

If anyone is interested let me know and I'll create some sample captures so you can hear the difference.

We're always interested in hearing and seeing samples. :)

Here's the buzz, it's completely removed after the trick