Old School Digital 8 video capture and conversion for posterity....

[redeemed626]

Posting as a newbie even though I would make you laugh at the things I still do, like converting and burning videos to DVD, or converting stereo to a passable Dolby Digital 5.1 using Foobar and VI. I cut my teeth on ATI video capture, and all that was involved back in the day.

But like a shade tree mechanic, I have allowed something to stack up on me, and I'm not sure what to do.

I have at least 75 Digital8 video cassettes that captured nearly a dozen years of family video on a Sony digital video recorder from around 2005-2015. I have kept my desktop with firewire because I found back in the day that it was easiest to transfer to computer by using DVIO, which leaves me with raw interlaced non HD video, almost all of which is 4:3.

My big question is, if I commit to capturing it with DVIO, what would be the best way to convert and preserve the quality and save it for posterity? The tapes still play great using the camera and an interlaced screen.

I'm concerned I'm going to die one day and my family will be clueless.

[Alwyn]

First step: If DVIO still works, well and good, continue "capturing" (or more correctly, "transferring") your DV. You'll end up with DV-AVIs as pure copies of what's on those tapes.

If DVIO no longer works (due to Windows changes, for example), use WinDV or Scenalyzer. I have written guides for them; WinDV here and Scenalyzer here. For me, Scenalyzer has proved to be more reliable than WinDV on Windows 10 and Win11.

Second step: many pathways to take. Other members will advise.

[redeemed626]

First step: If DVIO still works, well and good, continue "capturing" (or more correctly, "transferring") your DV. You'll end up with DV-AVIs as pure copies of what's on those tapes.

If DVIO no longer works (due to Windows changes, for example), use WinDV or Scenalyzer. I have written guides for them; WinDV here and Scenalyzer here. For me, Scenalyzer has proved to be more reliable than WinDV on Windows 10 and Win11.

Second step: many pathways to take. Other members will advise.

Thanks so much for this. I think I'm OK because the desktop I set aside is an ASUS consumer motherboard from around 2015 that has an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760. I installed the firewire in an extra slot. I have avoided upgrading to Windows 11 on this system because it has SO MUCH software I've collected and enjoyed over the years, and I was concerned about compatibility. But I will connect to the camera shortly just to confirm Windows 10 is not a problem for DVIO.

One reason I didn't do this back in the day was because of the massive storage requirements for full DV video and the slow conversion speeds. Of course both of those things are silly now given the massive increases in the capacity of storage components and the speed of conversion software.

I'm just curious, if successful in transferring using DVIO, what the hell I'm supposed to do to best preserve ten years of family video in terms of quality and a reasonable method of portable or cloud storage, etc. I use all sorts of video conversion software from Pegasys, etc, but if I go to the trouble to capture all this raw interlaced avi video, I don't want to screw it up in the conversion out of laziness.

I experienced a breakdown of the Sony Handycam DCR-TRV820 that recorded all the video ten years or so ago, but I was able to find a nearly brand new one on Ebay to save the day (aside from the frightening memory stick left in the camera that I will not discuss).

[dellsam34]

I usually drop the DV file into vdub2 and strip it from DV codec into AVI 4:2:2 in lossless compression as HuffYUV output or plain uncompressed AVI since this is a temporary file, Then using AvsPmod I de-interlace with QTGMC and upscale to 1440x1080, Then encode into h.264 using ffmpeg. You can also upload to Youtube for sharing right after the upscaling without having to encode if bandwidth is not an issue, Check this sample out that I uploaded right after upscaling.

[redeemed626]

I usually drop the DV file into vdub2 and strip it from DV codec into AVI 4:2:2 in lossless compression as HuffYUV output or plain uncompressed AVI since this is a temporary file, Then using AvsPmod I de-interlace with QTGMC and upscale to 1440x1080, Then encode into h.264 using ffmpeg. You can also upload to Youtube for sharing right after the upscaling without having to encode if bandwidth is not an issue, Check this sample out that I uploaded right after upscaling.

Thanks for the input. I'm familiar with all those except AvsPmod. vdub2 was a personal friend for a long time because it could do so many things.
I look forward to trying your approach.

[lollo]

I usually drop the DV file into vdub2 and strip it from DV codec into AVI 4:2:2 in lossless compression as HuffYUV output or plain uncompressed AVI since this is a temporary file, Then using AvsPmod I de-interlace with QTGMC and upscale to 1440x1080

Why you do not load directly the DV file in your AviSynth deinterlace/upscale script?

[dellsam34]

AvsPmod gives me visual interface, Very useful for cropping.

[lollo]

No relation. Load the DV file within AviSynth and load it with AvsPmod to have visual interface ��

[dellsam34]

I don't see a big difference here, besides, I'm not familiar with AviSynth and probably the reason I've never used it is some problems with its dependencies, it's been too long that I can't remember, What I can remember is AvsPmod solved all my problems.

[lollo]

What I meant is that there is no need to generate a temporary lossless file (if not for other purposes).

Your AviSynth script inside AvsPmod can be:

FFmpegSource2("<file_name>") # or any other source filter able to read DV

AssumeBFF().QTGMC() # deinterlace

nnedi3_rpow2(rfactor=2, nns=4, qual=2, cshift="Spline36Resize", fwidth=1440, fheight=1080) # upscale

[dellsam34]

Thanks, I'll give that a try next time.
How do I specify the file path though? Forgive my limited knowledge with AviSynth, like I said I've tried before and I could never get it to work.

Edit: Never mind, I figured it out, I don't have DV files now but I will use it in the future, Thanks.

[thecoalman]

but if I go to the trouble to capture all this raw interlaced avi video, I don't want to screw it up in the conversion out of laziness.

Just store the DV-AVI, it's not a massive file. About 13GB per hour. With 75 tapes and assuming 1 hour per tape you only need a terabyte which isn't exactly a whole lot these days.

[Alwyn]

@The coalman, you've messed up the quotes. I didn't say that; Redeemed626 said it.

[thecoalman]

@The coalman, you've messed up the quotes. I didn't say that; Redeemed626 said it.

Ooops, fixed. I'm used to looking at phpBB quotes where the quote tags are much longer. Your start tag was nested right after his.

[redeemed626]

I have transferred 12 hours so far using firewire and DVIO. ALL good.

I am following this thread, and I appreciate the help. I just don't want to get caught in the weeds, which is exactly what will happen when I try these different approaches. It is so freaking tempting to to stop and edit or add information to the videos. I rarely used video date stamps and the tapes are not in order, so I'm numbering them and adding descriptions to come back to them later.

I do have questions that will require followup. Unlike vdub2, my only exposure to virtualsynth involves Hybrid. The user interface mentioned sounds like it would make it easier to use.

Finally, I concur that leaving it in its purest DV form would avoid losing anything. I'm just not sure the rest of the family would understand the concept of source and medium.

[Alwyn]

Finally, I concur that leaving it in its purest DV form would avoid losing anything. I'm just not sure the rest of the family would understand the concept of source and medium.

By "store", I suspect that the coalman meant for archival purposes for future editing if you (or anybody else) want to do that.

You will most certainly have to convert your DV to another format, normally MP4 (H264 or H265) for distribution because DV compatibility is not great amoungst TVs.

[Alwyn]

Unlike vdub2, my only exposure to virtualsynth involves Hybrid. The user interface mentioned sounds like it would make it easier to use.

I'm not aware of any visual trimming editing capability in Hybrid. If your videos are like mine, there's plenty of junk that can be culled, so you could use VDub2 as a basic editor to do that (as well as divide up your 60 minute extravaganzas into separate files for each topic, if you so desire). You should be able to use Direct Stream Copy to avoid recoding.

Then, you take those trimmed DV files into Hybrid for QTGMCing and export in MP4 if that's the path you decide to take for final delivery.

[thecoalman]

I rarely used video date stamps and the tapes are not in order, so I'm numbering them and adding descriptions to come back to them later.

If the date/time was set on the camcorder it should be embedded as meta data. It's been a while since I did any transfers but I used to use a pro program from Ulead and you could set it to automatically split the transfer into different files based on the splits in the timecode. No idea what software supports that now.

Finally, I concur that leaving it in its purest DV form would avoid losing anything. I'm just not sure the rest of the family would understand the concept of source and medium.

It's a time consuming process and If it were me I'd just get 2TB+ external drive, transfer directly to that. Use the remaining space to convert for whatever formats you want. You can always go back to the source DV down the road.