Botched recording video to MiniDV via Scenalyzer?
 

Hello.

And so again I want to doe the exact opposite thing of what this furum is dedicated to.

I have recorded a short concert on MiniDV in LP mode, I always do it, because I don't want to miss something if the concert goes longer than 60 minutes (80 min tapes are expensive and rare). But this time the recording was 40 minutes (I know I should have asked the band how long they plan to perform).

I have then copied the video to HDD and thought that since Scenalyzer has an option to record the video back to MiniDV I thought why can't I transfer the 40 min video back to the tape this time in SP mode.

Obviously I have leveled up in stupidity and deceided to use the same tape.

The results, ruined master tape.

The Scenalyzer for some reason did not record the video properly, rather I see just still image, or glitched loop of several random frames.

So then, does anyone have any ideas if there is an option to fix this, or an alternative to transfer the video back to the tape?

...Which would make absolutely no improvement whatever -- the reformat/reencode will look worse than the original. I assume you're aware that DV is a lossy codec. Multiple lossy re-encodes never look better than the original.

:smack:

You mean the entire tape was recorded (re-encoded) onto your computer? What do you want with a re-encoded tape copy if you have a digital copy on your computer?

There is no reencoding and recompression. The DV stream is bit-identical copy of the tape on computer and it works the other way around, my camcorder is capable of receiving DV stream over iLink. The improvement would be that it would be easier to read SP rather than LP.

I didn't ruin entire tape, after few minutes I deceided to check it out, as there was no image on the display, when I record onto tape from analog input the VHS image is displayed.

You didn't specify you were using the iLink cable.
What's with VHS? I thought you were dealing with MiniDV. VHS vs MiniDV, entirely different things.

I thought it was obvious, that transfering DV occurs via firewire.

VHS was an anecdote to illustrate why I was suspicious that something is wrong, am I still having trouble writin in english?

There's really nothing in this forum that's anti-LP/EP (and never will be!), nor anything against recording in DV. That's all sound methodology as far as I'm concerned. You did nothing wrong here.

Now the goof was trying to record LP back to SP -- zero point in that.
Worse goof was messing up the master tape.
But these things you already know.

Right now is salvage mode. Use Scenarlyzer/WinDV to re-capture what's left on the master/source tape. Then see how that looks. I'd worry about that first. If you're having a hard time with it cooperating, and cannot get a get DV transer, just to an analog s-video Huffyuv capture. The loss will be negligible, unless you were using a pro/semi-pro DV camera (Canon DV SLR, for example). A consumer camcorder optics will not resolve better than s-video.

Next recover the missing section.

I know, I thought that tape in SP might be easier to recover in the future on different equipment if my camcorder dies.

I usually learn from mistakes, mostly my own.

This is unnessesary, as I have transfered the video first, then tried to record it from my computer back to tape. So I have the full video, but without master tape, so I need to back it up ASAP. Back to original question. Is there something wrong with the software, is it something I overlooked in settings, or is it my Samsung VP-D85i (rather not highest-end)? And is there a way to achieve my goal. Next week I should have a Digital8 camcorder, maybe I should try the trick there with a new tape.

So the full video plays without any issue on the computer?
And the only issue is the "new" DV recording isn't working on the old tape?

- I know there can be issues with reusing DV tapes. So that's one possibility.
- Maybe it is the camcorder. Not likely, but not impossible.
- Maybe it is the software. DV transfer software was always buggy and somewhat unstable, as compared to analog capture. I'd compare DV transfer to a 3.5" floppy disk, which was unreliable and fluky at times.
- The entire idea of "transfer back to tape" was a bit unusual, and you're not the first to have problems with it.

Do you really need to go back to tape? What's wrong with saving it to a backup hard drive? DV is only 13gb/hour, hardly a huge file.

I haven't seen thw whole video, just skipped over some parts, but it's fine.
The video is not properly transferred from PC to tape.

I don't need to, but I would like to, just in case.

Too many possibilities, little can be done about them. Reliable as a floppy, I remember I've seen purchasable software to back up computer data on MiniDV and Digital8 tapes via firewire to camcorders, the page is now dead, but I've read something on a forum about loads of errors.

I never reuse tapes for shooting new stuff, I just get new ones and I don't always use this camcorder, only when I need more than one, otherwise I use AVCHD one. I already keep my concert recording on external HDD, but I'll be getting another one, to nack up the first one.

DV tapes are not really archival anyway -- too thin, too delicate, too touchy. HDD 3x+ is the way to go for footage. Yeah, sure, keep the tapes since obviously that's where it was recorded. But when the original tape bites the dust, which is somewhat common even without botching it yourself, don't worry about it.

I hated backup tapes in the 90s. They'd fail too much, and I eventually tossed all that in the trash. CD was better, and that's saying something! (ie, CD-R is not archival at all)

That might be very true, though the manufacturers of tape backup systems ans tapes, claimed they were very reliable, obviously in controlled environment.

I guess I won't try to transfer the recording back to tape, lesson learned. Tape + transfered to HDD and maybe cloud backup would be enough.

Every manufacturer says that about everything.

Some even have "certifications" that mean even less, and sounds impressive if you don't look deeper.

As I recently told our somewhat obnoxious Brazilian media questioner, when he asked if a company was lying, I said that there's a difference between lying and being overly optimistic. Some are so overly optimistic that they describe a utopian future.

What about other software, ULead, or Windows Movie Maker, I've read about other now obscure software as well.

Maybe the problem is with the type of DV AVI, I copy in Type 2, maybe if it was convetrted into Type 1 it would work in ScLive?