How to Capture 700 Mini-DV

[Ferggue]

Hello,

I have the opportunity to work to build a Mini-DV capture island for a Public Archive and then work on the cassette conversion. I have experience in passing Mini-DV through Firewire but always with my handycam and never in large quantities.
There would be 700 Mini-DV recorded in NTSC and PAL
They did not tell me if in addition to Mini-DV there are DVCAM and DVCPRO, but surely there would be few if there were.

For now I only have two good computers with a Firewire board and a Handycam Mini-DV

What could you recommend to me to get an idea of the Mini-dv players that I could buy or any other information about it, since for the quantity I would have to devise a semi-industrial method.

Regarding compression of .AVI DV captured with Premiere PRO, what codec do you recommend?

Thanks a lot!

[rrats]

saving videos onto DV?

may be a crappy suggestion, but try using movie maker with windows xp

[aedipuss]

lol. you can get a mini-dv deck(not cheap these days) to connect to a computer over firewire for mini-dv and dvcam but you're going to need a complete video studio for dvcpro. a handycam ain't gonna cut it.

[nicholasserra]

saving videos onto DV?

may be a crappy suggestion, but try using movie maker with windows xp

Please don't do this.

As suggested by nearly everyone on here, transfer miniDV via ScenalyzerLive or WinDV.

Premiere is bloated for this simple use case, no reason to use it.

If you're transferring for a "Public Archive" you shouldn't be talking about reencoding at all. The DV files are 1:1 file transfers off the tape. Leave them as-is.

For 700 tapes god help you. MiniDV has not aged well. You'll want to pick up low hours Sony decks (DSR-25, DSR-45) for the bulk of the work. Grab a handful of other brand camcorders for the tapes that give you trouble.

Don't forget to clean the heads properly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O48BYwiERss

Many many tapes will give you trouble. Mostly digital artifacts, "stuck" lines, audio dropouts. Expect to run at least 3 passes per tape, on multiple decks. Save everything.

Any LP tapes you encounter don't get your hopes up on a clean transfer, these tapes were barely able to be played back the day they were recorded on the camera they were recorded with.

Two passes of each tape will be around 17 Terabytes of data.

Here's the decks I run for the occasional box of miniDV I come across: https://twitter.com/livenirvana/status/1399804797683912713

good luck!

[oln]

handycam ain't gonna cut it.

You are going to need one or more camcorders if there are any LP recordings, the VCRs doesn't support it (other than possibly one or two models but I don't remember which one). The VCRs I've used have been a bit hit or miss in general on tapes from comsumer camcorders but YMMV. If it's all DVCAM recordings from a pro camera then the VCRs may be a better option though.

[energizerfellow]

As suggested by nearly everyone on here, transfer miniDV via ScenalyzerLive or WinDV.

Premiere is bloated for this simple use case, no reason to use it.

Don't forget HDVSplit for DV/HDV. Scenalyzer is arguably better for regular DV than WinDV from what I've seen.

There's also dvgrab on Linux, which can do things like HDV, CLI automation, or store metadata as a SRT file. FFmpeg works too, but you have to be careful not to accidentally transcode.

You'll also want to grab a PCIe IEEE 1394b card based on either the Texas Instruments XIO2213B or LSI/Agere FW643 for maximum stability. Apple's Thunderbolt Firewire adapters work well too, but you'll be chaining dongles together. Cheap UVC (USB Video Class) compliant DV adapters are typically "you get what you pay for" affairs with various issues like no AV/C VTR control and USB bus contention.

If you're on Windows, you may need to download the FireWire driver from Microsoft and/or change permissions on a registry key if you run into any issues with a IEEE 1394 card.

If you're transferring for a "Public Archive" you shouldn't be talking about reencoding at all. The DV files are 1:1 file transfers off the tape. Leave them as-is.

Absolutely leave them as native DV/HDV bitstream if you can. Putting the DV codec inside a MOV container seems to be the most compatible with picky programs like DaVinci Resolve and avoids the Type-1 vs. Type-2 DV AVI file issue. Same for HDV's H.262+MP2 inside a M2TS or MOV container.

For 700 tapes god help you. MiniDV has not aged well. You'll want to pick up low hours Sony decks (DSR-25, DSR-45) for the bulk of the work. Grab a handful of other brand camcorders for the tapes that give you trouble.

This very much sounds like a job for multiple real-deal pro VTRs that have Firewire.

Near as I can tell, the list of pro DV VTRs with IEEE 1394 consist of:

• Sony HVR
• Sony DSR
• Panasonic AJ-HD
• Panasonic AG-DV
• JVC BR-HD
• JVC BR-DV

Note:
Pro HDV VTRs will cover all DV variants and larger cassette sizes (except LP speed MiniDV/DV, which you'll need consumer hardware for), plus generally be more mechanically rugged, newer, and have less hours on them. Sony units will also have DVCAM support, along with 1080p support on the newest models.

Note:
If you are trying to archive consumer LP MiniDV tapes, you'll want one of the prosumer DV VCRs from Sony, Panasonic, or JVC. These should be more mechanically durable than a fragile consumer camcorder. I think the Panasonic AG-DV1000 may be the most mechanically simple of these?

Don't forget to clean the heads properly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O48BYwiERss

Many many tapes will give you trouble. Mostly digital artifacts, "stuck" lines, audio dropouts. Expect to run at least 3 passes per tape, on multiple decks. Save everything.

Any LP tapes you encounter don't get your hopes up on a clean transfer, these tapes were barely able to be played back the day they were recorded on the camera they were recorded with.

Two passes of each tape will be around 17 Terabytes of data.

Yes to all this.