Hi- I'm have been in the process of converting home videos on and off for several years. I have been living in Mac/DV land and despite everything I know from reading these forums for years, it has mostly been working out for my needs. Don't hate.
However, I recently came across a few 8mm Sony MP120 tapes that I just have not been happy with the quality, particularly in the darker scenes. Very noisy, and the DV compression and chroma issues more apparent than in previous captures. It made me wonder what the captures would look like if I did them on the recommended setups discussed in this forum and videohelp.com. Despite what you may think from paragraph 1, I do really care about quality and preservation of my home videos, and I'm ready to see for myself the improvements I could potentially make by avoiding DV for analog.
I am willing to step into the Windows world to try to do this "right"... or better, or at least the best I can but I am down a deep rabbit hole and I need some guidance. Being that I have a "working setup" albeit not the most ideal, I have to figure out what I have and what I would need to get there and make sure it's in the cards for me.
Here are my current available options:
1. I have an old PC that a friend and I custom built probably around 2005-2006 that has Windows XP on it. We built it (at the time) to be fairly beefy in terms of graphics and other specs because I was into digital photography and was running Photoshop etc. I tried to boot this up today and I think the power supply went bad in the last year. It turns on and off immediately. So without replacing the power supply (if that is even the problem) I can't even check the specs and everything else to see if it's a viable capture machine.
2. I have a Dell laptop Latitude E6430 that has Windows 7 Professional on it with 8GB of RAM. On board graphics card so nothing fancy there. Is it possible to use this laptop for capturing? What other specs would you need to know to answer this question?
3. My main computer is a late 2013 iMac with 10.10 Yosemite and I have and am comfortable using FCP7 to work with my DV captures for basic splitting, titling, fading. Are there any better options for me in this environment avoiding the DV compression? There really isn't a lot of consistent information about Macs out there as I've seen over and over "it's the wrong tool for the job" but - is there a USB or Thunderbolt device out there that could possibly work if I were to try capturing in ProRes422?
Other potentially helpful info:
-I do not currently have a TBC. (gasp)
-I do have a JVC S-VHS deck for my VHS tapes. (JVC SR-MV55) I'm done with VHS tapes but I would consider going back for re-dos at some point if I figure out a better option here.
-I do have the original camcorder the 8mm tapes were filmed on, it has S-Video out. (Sony CCD-TRV99)
-I had some luck playing the 8mm tapes from the TRV-99 in my Sony Digital8 camcorder (DCR-TRV530) and that's what I had been going with for a while until the brand of tapes were switched to the Sony MP120. The camera just doesn't like those tapes and I mainly get audio or bad tracking issues.
-In those cases I was using the Digital8 as a passthrough for DV conversion as the original camcorder plays them fine.
-I also have a DataVideo DAC-200 that I have used instead of the passthrough. Oddly, the 8mm tape captures, when they did play in the Digital8 cam, looked better to me than the TRV99->DAC200 (all DV).
-I haven't gotten up to my collection of VHS-C tapes yet, but that would be next. They were filmed on a very cheap-o Quasar camcorder that took a lot of abuse in college. It seems to have one combined A/V out port so I likely would use the VHS adapter on those tapes when I get to them in the S-VHS VCR.
-I have seen people make reference to DVD recorders but I think particularly the ones that record from VHS. Not sure if this helps but I do have an old Pioneer DVD recorder/HDD that I used to use for recording TV before the days of cable box DVR. I doubt this does anything for me but, it's a Pioneer DVR-640H-S, just in case.
So lonnnng story short: Can I use my Windows 7 Dell Laptop for capturing? If so, I can start looking into acquiring the recommended USB Devices, possibly a TBC (are these really ~$1000 or are there cheaper options?). Or, is there something that would/could work with my Mac? Or, if I want to do better, do I have to go and get a different PC too??
Side note: I have already installed
VirtualDub with LordSmurfs filter pack,
HuffYUV, and got all that working with some other random USB Capture stick that I am sure is terrible - I had bought it to try something once a while back since this one has component cables, but it was awful and I never used it. The package says "USB Video & Audio Grabber" and the software that is bundled is branded Honestech. It comes with Mac software/drivers and capture tool branded v-cap (it does "work" on a different macbookpro I have that I tried it on just to see). It was enough for me to know I could get
VirtualDub and
HuffYUV working on the Windows7 laptop but I have to assume either this unit is garbage because the capture didn't look that much better than DV and the audio wasn't great, or that my laptop isn't sufficient for the job.
I'm at my wits end here lost in forum-research-land and I am ready to just get back to it, one way or another. I would GREATLY APPRECIATE some guidance from someone who can take all of the above and give me realistic viable options.
If you've gotten this far, thank you for reading.