Comment by bitparadox
21 hours ago
I've started working through a backlog of a few hundred home movie tapes, mostly MiniDV, but a few dozen 8mm and Hi8. Fortunately I have a Digital8 camcorder I've been able to use for the analog 8mm tapes to interface with dvcam over ieee1394.
A quick python script around dvcam lets me drop a tape in and type in the label on the tape, and it rewinds, captures the raw tape, transcodes it with ffmpeg, and adds it to a jellyfin library for family to view.
I also have a Sony DHR-1000 DVCAM/MiniDV deck I've been using for all the minidv tapes, but suddenly it started ejecting tapes with an error whenever I insert one. Does anyone know any good communities online that might be able to help me get the deck working again? I'm hoping it's just something that needs adjusting or cleaning, since it worked fine until now (though it is probably close to 30 years old now).
That’s the biggest issue with trying to deal with dv tapes - the hardware is simply not very robust. Most cameras will either start ejecting tapes, eating them, or get filthy and start reading poorly with dropouts or damage the next tapes… it’s the kind of task that just keeps having new roadblocks and gets harder with scale (unless you are able to repair the decks yourself or willing to just keep buying them - but they’re eventually going to become scarce as well). The software side is relatively simple but can also be complicated by dropouts / overzealous scene detection in some software for capturing - so sometimes you have to just let it happen and run a script to stitch all the files back together into one to maintain sanity.
Sorry I am now ranting, because I had a huge box of them to deal with containing a lot of memories and projects that were valuable to me personally, and I procrastinated for years but finally got it done. Glad I did and those tapes are long gone.
VHS / analog tapes have similar issues but the solutions are easier to acquire (millions of cheap vcr’s everywhere), and you can tap directly into the signal so it’s actually a rich and interesting community and challenge to improve it. MiniDV is just pain for those of us whose prime years shooting footage happened to be during its reign.
Any chance you would share your script? Also do you deal with audio sync before or after ripping?
I have a similar project in my backlog, ~100 Hi8 and Digital8 tapes to digitize before they get too old and fragile.
I already have a Digital8 camcorder and the requisite FireWire cable plus TB2 and TB3 adapters for connecting to my Mac or PC. Just need to get off my ass and start!
100 tapes is quite a mountain to climb. I would consider finding a discount code for a service like southtree (or similar) and sending at least some of them to be processed that way. I did most of mine manually but had to throw in the towel for some tapes and send them in and I found that they often had like 50% off promotions and discounts for higher scales.
If you are down for the challenge / 100 hours of capture, go for it but just wanted to throw that out there because I hate to see media be lost to the sands of time.