Hello and welcome, dear viewer. Today I have another tutorial video for you,
and this time it’s for a personal reason that I want to do it. Recently, I had the task of transferring old
footage from an old camcorder onto modern hardware and into a future-proof format. If you know anything about the camcorder technology
of the late 90’s and the 2000’s, you know that the common format used back there was
Digital Video, or in short DV. [Skip to XX:XX for the tutorial]. DV is kind of an odd format, quite honestly. It used tape, like this [These are Mini-DV
cassettes, which did not differ from the other DV formats electronically but only in size
and shape]. But other than most tape formats that ever
existed [and were used by anyone except its researchers], it’s actually digital, with
a compression method not unlike JPEG [video uses intra-frame discrete cosine transform
chroma subsampling YCbCr-based compression like (Motion-)JPEG, audio is uncompressed
max. 16-bit 48kHz PCM like WAV]. They were only really phased out by the rise
of flash media [SD cards and the like] towards the end of the 2000’s. But until then, many amateurs had these nifty
camcorders with them, like the Sony Handycam DCR-HC24 that I have here. This device is pretty much exactly twenty
years old, and surprisingly, has no major issues with its tape drive. Oh, yes, of course, all of the demonstration
footage today will be modern things I shot in 2020, like fancy handheld pans of obsolete
cassette formats [Yes, I found some unused MiniDV-cassettes just lying around that worked
instantly. Seriously.]. Just for comparison, this is my Google Pixel
4A 5G with in-built image stabilization recording 4K60fps. Crazy how technology advances. Let’s get to the tutorial. The first step, of course, is to make sure
you have all the hardware and that all the hardware works individually. Get out your old camcorder or buy a used one
that still works, and make sure that it works! These mechanical tape drives have quite the
habit of failing, even after only fifteen to twenty years. Put in one of your cassettes and make sure
that it will play back just fine, including audio. This is all we need, the recording part does
not need to be functional at all. And this is also the place where many initial
errors will occur, so I want to go over some of them. The camcorder doesn’t turn on? Your battery is probably dead. Many camcorders will refuse to turn on even
with external power on a dead battery, so remove the battery and power the camcorder
just externally. If you don’t have DC in, you may want to
find a replacement battery [Many large companies haven’t changed battery formats or the old
formats are still available as after-market]. A “reinsert cassette” error occurs after
loading a cassette? Oh god. This seems to be a really common error with
Sony camcorders, and I get it pretty much every time I insert a cassette. In short, there may be several things wrong. First, make sure that no moisture has collected
inside the tape drive, leave the drive open in your working space for some hours. Second, try inserting the cassette, then when
the error occurs, just remove the power without properly turning the camcorder off. Wait about a minute and plug the power back
in, go into play mode and try playing the cassette. That should do the trick. I suspect that some tape-related sensors are
simply reporting bullspit, because nothing ever failed in these scenarios. And yes, you may need to do this almost every
time you insert any cassette. I need to, at least. Some other solutions may involve giving the
camcorder a good smack or two [no jokes], as well as trying different cassettes and
manually rewinding them some amount. Some people needed to re-insert a small plastic
ring on the roller that clamps and transports the tape. I have a [potato quality] video linked in
the description if you want to try that. The camcorder still doesn’t work? Really, just get a cheap camcorder that does. The recording quality is irrelevant at this
point, it should [If you recorded in SP. If you used LP, get the same model as the
recording device b/c that mode has compatibility issues] be able to play back any DV cassettes
just fine. PS: Here comes a part I never thought I would
do! Shocking, right? If you have a Hi8-Camcorder, more specifically
a Digital8-Camcorder, you’re in luck! This format is essentially the DV digital
standard slapped onto a Hi8-cassette, which in itself is more or less a small version
of the analog S-VHS reduced in size for camcorders. Basically every Digital8 camcorder you can
find has FireWire as well, and all of these steps and probably solutions work exactly
the same as with a DV camcorder. I however want to add one piece of help that
I encountered while trying to get these Hi8 cassettes to run. The cassettes I have here were in fact recorded
with an analog camcorder, but the Digital8 camcorders will digitize them for you, neat! However, the video was almost unreadable and
only live preview fast-forward would show any signal at all. I managed to fix it by simply rewinding the
tape to the beginning, then recording half a minute of Digital8 video over the cassette. For whatever reason, this made the analog
section of the tape, here signified with the Hi8 logo, play back without any major trouble,
including the HiFi stereo audio. Anyways, back to old me. So I now assume that your camcorder works,
it can playback, and hopefully also rewind. Next, we need a computer connection. And before you scream at me: “I see! My camcorder has a USB-Mini-B-port, that connects
to my modern computer! That’s easy!” I have to disappoint you. Many of these devices aren’t even USB 2
yet. And all of their USB output is garbage, if
you trust any sources online and in the manuals. Besides, I was not able to get my camcorder
working over USB. So the solution is to use FireWire. For anyone that has forgotten, the USB competitor
was on top of the game back then, so most to all camcorders will have one of these Mini-FireWire
connectors. Now I’m not going into the details here,
but you can’t simply adapt FireWire into USB, that’s because the protocols are fundamentally
different. There are pretty much two options: PCIe and
Thunderbolt. If you own a Mac or any reasonably recent
good laptop, Thunderbolt is your option [this is possible because Thunderbolt is just PCIe
with another transport layer on steroids]. If you have any desktop computer from the
last quarter century (my god), PCIe is your option. If you have some laptop of the in-between-times,
you could try a mini-PCIe adapter, for which you need to disassemble your laptop and probably
detach your graphics card or something. I’ve used a PCIe card on desktop, which
does the trick just fine. Even though FireWire is pretty much a dead
standard now, Windows does still have drivers for it, and macOS should, too [given that
Apple was the main company behind FireWire in the first place]. Mount your FireWire card/adaptor [never plug
in PCIe devices without powering off the system!] and it should just be detected. On Windows, open Device Manager and look for
a top-level entry called “IEEE 1394 host controller”, under which a device like “OHCI
VIA IEEE 1394 Hostcontroller” should appear. Yes, I don’t know what any of these abbreviations
mean, but IEE 1394 is the technical name behind FireWire. Linux users can check the relevant PCIe devices
with “lspci | grep -i FireWire”, and use “dmesg | grep -i firewire” for troubleshooting
[also I think Linux users can help themselves]. Mac users – you’ll have to hope that Steve
Jobs blesses your computer and makes your adaptor work. Finally, [after 1000 words script] it is time
to connect the two devices. Make sure that the FireWire cable you have
does actually work. Mine didn’t. After that, turn on the devices and connect
them. Just to be safe, put your camcorder into playback
mode. Now, on Windows, you should see an “Image
processing device” popping up. These are things like scanners and webcams,
but if your camcorder isn’t anything special, it should just appear here. The great thing is that the drivers for these
things are standard and already part of the kernel, so you shouldn’t need to install
anything [this is the great advantage of FireWire, where the peer-to-peer-system forces all devices
to talk standard protocols, instead of custom drivers for all devices on USB’s master-slave
system]. On Linux, check that a /dev/fw device pops
up that doesn’t have the number 0 [this is your controller]. Apple people, just hope that it worked. Next, we want to actually access the device
in a live playback so that we know that it works. The one and only software you should use from
now on is VLC Media Player, available on all platforms for free. This thing is magic, it reads and writes all
formats that were ever invented and will ever be invented. Click on Media Open capture device. In the “video device name”, you should
be able to select some device that seems to be related. To find out what you need, take note of the
options before turning on or plugging in the camcorder. On Windows, the device is most definitely
called “Windows DV Camera and VCR”. This would be the time for Linux people to
do some kernel debugging and for the Apple users to buy a non-Apple computer if things
didn’t work. But seriously, good luck getting the old drivers
to work on modern computers. If you need do that, you’re on your own. Once you get to this step, not much should
be going wrong. Just to be absolutely sure, de-select the
audio device and re-select the default device. I had audio issues sometimes when I didn’t
do this. Next, NEVER EVER change the advanced options. Even if you’re having aspect ratio issues
like I did. There will be NO VIDEO if you do this. Also, click on “show more options” and
select a buffer time above 1000ms, or one second. This will be especially important for later
recording the footage, and I have had consistent results with five seconds and above. Now just click on play! You will probably see nothing, but that’s
fine. Start the playback on your camcorder, and
as soon as it shows any footage, you should see something in VLC as well. And hear something, too. The stream will be delayed by your buffer
time. If things didn’t work, VLC is probably still
showing a faint red bar bouncing around in the playback bar area. This means that it cannot properly connect
to the device and you need to check your previous steps. Also, to make sure that everything is correct,
click on Tools Codec Information. You should see two streams, one with “DV
Video” and one with “PCM S16 LE”. Now we’re on to recording! The critical thing to notice is that while
simple playback can quickly adjust to changes in input format, recording cannot. So I’m always taking a few extra measures
that come from my experience in having many recordings with failed audio, video or both. So for recording you want to go through the
same steps as before, making sure to select a decent buffer time, but now click the arrow
next to “Play” and select “Convert”. This is the screen you already know if you
ever used VLC to convert between video and audio formats, but this time, we want to select
“Dump raw input”. Yes, your computer may be able to do H.264
live re-encoding of the DV stream, but in my experience, it never worked. We want to literally transfer the exact contents
of the cassette into a file so that we can later work with it in any way we need to. Select a file name that ends in “.dv”. And here comes the important bit: Put the
play position of your camcorder right before the segment you want to record first. That usually means the very start of the tape. Start playback and wait until your camcorder
shows video and audio. Then, click start in VLC. If you don’t do this, the video may be fine,
but the audio will most likely be missing or glitched. I lost about five hours to this issue and
this is why I want you to carefully follow these steps. After starting the recording, VLC will show
a 00:00 time position, which is fine, and it may also show an orange buffering indicator,
which is also fine. The best way to check that VLC is actually
doing anything is to use Task Manager or your system monitor and check that VLC is writing
to disk with about 1.7 to 2MB/s. Now, of course, your recording started in
the middle of some possibly important clip, so what you want to do after starting the
recording in VLC, is first wait about ten seconds to make sure the buffer is completely
fine. Then rewind until before the clip you need,
it is ok if you hit a section of tape without data. Now you’ll have to wait! Recording needs to be done in real time, so
cassettes take an hour to 1.5 to record in full. If you only need specific sections, use your
camcorder’s video feed to check when to stop VLC’s recording. A quick note of warning: You can’t end VLC
normally after you’re done, and most of the time you can’t even stop the recording! This is fine, the files are readable at any
point in the process. Just wait until you are assured that VLC is
not writing to disk anymore after the tape stopped. Then you can force close it. Now you should have a raw DV file, and because
a hundred things can go wrong, I would advise you to always check the recording. First is the file size: Standard play cassettes
are 12-13GB and long play are 18-20GB. Yes, you heard right, if you have a lot of
cassettes, be prepared to use the largest storage devices you have available. The 25 DV cassettes I had to transfer added
up to exactly 441GB. In this context: Make sure that your hard
drive uses a file system that supports large file sizes. All standard OS file systems [Mac: APFS or
HFS+, Windows: NTFS, Linux: ext4] will work. Next, try playing the files in VLC. Usually, they will be opened automatically
by it. Check for audio and video, and check multiple
points in the clip to make sure that all parts are fine. Because many DV cassette recordings may be
segmented, some segments can be fine while others were corrupted. You can use the Tools Codec Information
again and should see the same output. If you encounter an audio issue where the
audio is present in regular, short, high-pitched blibs [like this], you are suffering from
audio type mismatch errors. Again no details, but 12-bit audio and 16-bit
audio will be decoded incorrectly if one follows after the other in a single recording. Follow the process of starting a recording
again, but this time, start with the first clip that was having a different audio bitrate,
which pretty much certainly is not the first clip of the recording. Check the file again, this time, at least
the clip that you started with should be working. Repeat if necessary. Yes, this will be cumbersome, and there is
no way to check it in advance, but I only saw this on 2 cassettes from 25 and only had
to do four re-records. The final steps are where things may diverge
again, but next we obviously need to convert into a modern video/audio standard. Open VLC, click Media Convert/Save. The File menu should be visible. Drag in your clips or click on Add to open
a file selection. Click Convert/Save. Make sure that “Convert” is selected and
– very important – Deinterlace is NOT selected. VLCs deinterlacer is very imprecise and we
will deal with the interlacing artifacts later. Select the H.264 + MP3 profile, which should
have no additional settings selected internally. Because you probably selected multiple files,
you cannot choose their target location [seriously VLC this should be an option], but you can
append a “-converted” to the file name in case you want to make sure. Click “Start”. Even though your computer can probably encode
these videos at over ten times speed, this will still take a while. Also, in between conversions, it heavily writes
to disk while not showing proper output, so don’t be confused if it seems to pause for
no reason. Watch and check the finished MP4 files, and
maybe also put them into another video player. The other option may be to do the conversion
with ffmpeg, and if you can do that, you shouldn’t be watching this tutorial. So essentially you’re done now. You can archive the footage just like that. But for all the people with higher needs,
this is where you need to get into video editing. This will allow you to separate disparate
recordings, fix the common aspect ratio errors, and finally deinterlace your footage. At this point you should look up some general
tutorials on video editing if you can’t do that yet, so I’ll only be giving some
pieces of advice. DaVinci Resolve is a great choice because
it will do more than you need for free. The “scene detection” will allow you to
speed up the process of separating clips on the tape. Unlock the zoom sliders and adjust the X scale
to fix aspect ratio errors. I found that 1.44 is about right for converting
4:3 into 16:9. For deinterlacing, I would recommend the openfx-misc
package, which has a very good deinterlacer. Visit them for information on installation
and usage. Just two words of warning: I didn’t get
the plugin to work on an Adjustment Layer. You will probably want to work with compound
clips and put the effects on there. Also, it’s horribly unoptimized and slow
even on powerful PCs [Not that I claim that my PC is fast, just other effects are much
faster]. And that’s all! I recommend you create a spreadsheet like
this, to keep track of all the stuff you’ve archived and what issues you encountered. This helped me a lot in the entire process. Until next time, goodbye.
