MiniDV tapes with vertical pixelated lines?
 

Hi.
I've bought a Sony DCR-PC8E in very good condition. I've just started to transfer 200 MiniDV tapes to my PC.

Out of 30 tapes that I've transferred so far, two have vertical pixelated lines. The other tapes have no disturbance. With these two tapes the disturbance shows on the camcorder, and also when transferred to PC. Se attached images.

Logical the problems should be with these two tapes. No way I will try cleaning the heads as I still have 170 tapes to transfer and don't to mess with a camera that work as well as it does. Furthermore I'm not interested in having the tapes digitalized by a camera company.

Is there any way to improve the health of these two tapes?

P.S I do use Elgato Capture Device and A/V-cable. I'm happy with the quality. I've no need to get lessons from besserwissers about how bad ECD is and that I should use firewire. I'm asking about the tape, nothing else.

Yes, Clean the video heads and do a retake. There is an automated high quality software called DVrescue that requires firewire but even with that frequent head cleaning is required to a certain extent.

Besserwisser so a know it all, wise guy, smart ass. Okay. You are coming here for advice and we are giving it for free on our time because we like the hobby. It’s just advice. You can not ask questions and figure it out yourself if you want but if you are going to ask questions don’t start with name calling. If you don’t want advice on changing anything then just do what you are doing.

This one is really strange for you to say all the Besserwisser stuff because what you are doing is using an Elgato to transfer DV. That’s what got memories does. Not suggested at all. If you want to though go for it.

-- merged --

Actually maybe you should ask Got Memories. He does say the point of his videos are to help people do it themselves and he actually suggest the method you are using. That sounds like a good person for you to talk to about this problem. Even Gotmemories doesn’t suggest it. Everyone talks crap about it in the comments section then he says hey it’s quicker than doing it through FireWire. He says it’s 8gb per hour vs. 800MB per hour for him to go straight to H.264.

As long as you realize the issues, and that many of your problems are likely related. With that understood, sure, we'll try to help you, but there's only so much that can be done with inferior/low-end gear.

How did you determine this? I'm not convinced it's in "good condition" at all, given what you're seeing and experiencing here.

That's a lot of tapes to attempt with problem gear. Even I'd quit in frustration. :rats:

Maybe, maybe not.

- I agree, "clean the heads" is too early to determine here.
- However, if it is dirty heads -- and understanding you'll transfer dirt to other tapes, if it exists -- then you won't have a choice. It has to be done. Been there, done that, irritating PITA process.

Yes, cleaning is likely needed. But you also cannot rule out camera damage (likely from overheating internals), I/O port damage, or cables.

We sadly live in an era where even certain politicians (worldwide) are name-calling assholes (not irony), so everybody wants to do it. They (him especially) gave permission for other people to be their worst selves. Our entire societal discourse has been sullied. But most people still are not like that. We demand better, even if they do not. So I'll answer the question, though not without pushback to the attitude. This ugly chapter in own still-being-written history will pass eventually, and history will not be kind to it. Same for ultra-cheapness (and yet splurging on vices, expensive cell phones, gamer computers, etc), hindsight will show it to be ignorant and foolish, destruction of media and memories.

GotMemories has some pretty horrible advice, some cringey videos that show lack of knowledge (and lack of care), and their (non)quality is obvious on video "samples" run through their low-end gear. But if that's what you want, have at it. It's not much better than LegacyBox.

You didn't get it. :hmm:

Thanks, no firewire as I said.

I contradicted myself. Capturing memories Gotmemories uses Elgato but he doesn’t recommended it or claim it’s better than FireWire. He just says customers are too ignorant about this stuff and generally don’t care.

Yep no FireWire. It’s probably the heads on the camcorder with this issue anyways. Good luck with it.

I understand you mean to say GotMemories, but please try not to conflate them with respected user latreche34, who runs the informative Capturing Memories YouTube channel.

Damn. Yeah you’re right there’s a big difference there. I’ll read over messages before I send them.

Then ... add one? :unsure:

Certain Pinnacle cards have the USB bridge chips. The analog-in quality varies based on factors (and I sell those "good versions" in the marketplace here), but the DV bridge is fine on all of them. It's just an 1's and 0's translation chip, digital data start to end..

I find the "cheap Chinese capture card" vs. "1990s DV conversion method" to be like comparing dog turds to cat turds. Either way, you're playing with poop, not quality.

Probably, maybe, but not definitive. Troubleshooting is fun, no? :laugh::screwy:

Nah, that's what the EDIT button is for, or Site Staff request when the edit time elapses. I fixed it, no worries.

It happens. (Especially to me, thanks MS. :smack:)

First I would try to play the tapes with pixelated lines with a different camera/player to see if disturbance remain. That 2 tapes could be recorded bad (due to dirt on tape path or some problem with tape transport).

That's a good idea, but it's not like I have a stock of MiniDV camcorders. I've transfered a dozen more tapes. This far only the two tapes mentioned that had pixelated lines.

I wish it was tapes with ex-girlfriends that had disturbance and not my tape with my piranhas. :)

:laugh::laugh::laugh:

I have transferred 145 of my 220 MiniDV tapes to my PC. The tapes are recorded between 1998 and 2010.
This far I've had 8 tapes with vertical pixelated lines. The other tapes have no disturbance at all. All the tapes with disturbance are successively tapes from 2001. The tapes before and after 2001 work just fine.

As the majority of the tapes are working fine it doesn't seem logical to me that it should be caused by dirty camcorder head. Still I have tried using a cleaning tape but with no difference in the result.

This issue puzzles me. All the tapes are filmed with the same camcorder and all are Sony tapes. My conclusion is that the problem is with the tapes filmed in 2001. Except for trying another cleaning, is there anything else I could try?

Try DVRescue, Oh wait... it requires firewire, never mind.

If it would be the case that I filmed the tapes in 2011 with a dirty head, would that mean that the tapes are recorded with disturbance and that's end of story?

I meant 2001.

It's possible.

It doesn’t look like a dirty head to me, either when recorded or at playback. I remember looking into this some time ago and while information on DV recording is slowly disappearing online, esp. images, there’s still useful stuff out there if you research it.

On a DV tape, a dirty head causes much more dramatic macroblock like defects where large portions of the picture are “error corrected” by filling in the missing data with data from past frames. I’m going to speculate that it was a bad batch of tapes with some kind of coating defect (streak or something). I could not find anything online to really support this theory, but it seems more reasonable than dirty heads.

My :2cents:
BW

Thanks BW37. I also doubt dirty head. I checked the tapes. Two kinds of Sony tapes.
I guess the camera by some reason was a bit f*cked up during 2001.

As said it's only my tapes filmed in 2001 that have pixelated lines.
I noticed one tape from 1998 that had one part (20 minutes) that was reused in 2001. This part had the pixelated lines. So propably there was some problem with my camcorder in 2001.

I looked for some software, beside DVRescue, that I could use to see if I could reuse the pixelated lines. I found none.