Video8/8mm Capture via FireWire (Digital8 camcorder) or via s-video?

[Marvolo]

Hi,
before I get right to the core, I'll apologize in advance for potential language mistakes. I'm German and my English is.. well.. not native. Also I hope I'm not using German terminology here, so in case there's some words you haven't really heard of before (even though they sound English), please tell me.

What's the problem?
My parents documented my childhood using a video8 camcorder (we call them video8 in German, as opposed to the slightly better Hi8 (both analogue) and then there's Digital8 which is basically the same cassette type, but it records everything digitally in DV). So we're speaking of a cassette with 8mm bandwidth but the lowest possible type there is: video8. Video8 cams don't have an s-video output because only the Hi8 (the slightly better version) uses separation of chroma and luminance. However, I've read there can still be a benefit capturing those video8 tapes using an s-video output rather than the usual Cinch/Composite (yellow, white, red) outputs.

The issue with those tapes is: we wanted to capture all of them in 2008 and since we didn't have any video8/Hi8/Digital8 camcorder, we contacted a professional service to have them transferred. They did everything they could but apparently, all of our tapes were not playable, that is, they were, but either with picture OR with sound. None of the tapes played both picture and sound at the same time. They tried manual tracking and everything they could possibly do to their players but to no avail. They told us that the culprit behind this must have been the cam which recorded the tapes. The cam must have had some kind of loss of adjustment to the video and sound heads and so it recorded something that was not due to the norm.

Luckily, they redirected us to a specialist firm in Hamburg which specialized in difficult cases and I don't know what they did there or what equipment they used, but they managed to play all our tapes back capturing picture AND sound at the same time, just like every other normal tape. However, they captured everything using the DV-AVI file format, so I assume they used a Digital8 camcorder to play back our analog Video8 tapes and used the FireWire output of the Digital8 camcorder which resulted in recording a DV-AVI file. (Same file format that is used for capturing MiniDV or DV cassettes using FireWire).

Those files look great, I must say but unlike back then, I've now devoted more and more time to video editing and I use a lot of German based video forums and they all tell me that those DV-AVI files are not the best format for archiving material or to capture analog material. It was very prominent back in the day because MiniDV and everything was on its peak but nowadays you don't burn DVDs any longer but watch the material via home server right on your 4k or 8k Smart TV.

So what I now have in mind is: keeping those DV-AVI files at all costs but still try to re-capture all those video8 tapes which I still have. Of course, they haven't been touched since 2008 when they were captured by the specialist, so probably they have suffered since then and that's why I will definitely keep those DV-AVI files. But I still want to try and re-capture them and this time use a better format.

German forums have suggested capturing uncompressed and told me to avoid DV-AVI which has only 4:2:0 colour sampling compared to uncompressed formats with 4:2:2 or even 4:4:4

The only problem I see here now is: those tapes were not recorded by the norm. I doubt that I will get a good playback without de-adjusting the player to such a degree that video AND sound will both be present at the same time. Unfortunately, that specialist from Hamburg seems to have closed the business - the website is no longer online. I would have asked him to re-capture in uncompressed but I can not assume he still offers these services.

So, what would you guys say? In order to get back to the headline: is a capture of analog material better using DV-AVI / Firewire or is it better using s-video and uncompressed?

Which format should be used for archiving purposes? I mean, of course I want to edit the material, but I still want to store it for the years to come. All I have at the moment are those DV-AVI files captured in 2008 (presumably via FireWire using a Digital8 camcorder or any other 8mm playback that has digital output).

Thanks a lot in advance!
Marvolo

[davexnet]

Assuming you have a Camcorder with S-video that can play them back properly, and a capture device that will let you capture
lossless, use the UT Video codec and capture 4:2:2 at PAL resolution (720x576).

[Marvolo]

@davexnet

The most difficult part would be finding a device that plays them back properly. Every normal device probably will not play them properly unless the device is manipulated in such a way that they become playable.

I wonder how to adjust a device in such a way? I mean, that specialist did it. So there must be some way.

[davexnet]

Well it's potentially better capturing through S-video,
but the whole question is moot if you can not get a proper capture.
Perhaps look for someone in your area and get
a second opinion

[Cornucopia]

It is a shame that the specialist place in Hamburg didn't give you more details regarding how they went about getting a clean signal from the tapes. Could have been an alignment issue, a non-standard speed issue, a tape damage issue (scalloping?), or possibly - but not at all likely - a PAL vs. NTSC issue.

Trying to recreate that years later, from scratch would be a major undertaking. I don't recommend it.

Yes DV compression is not as good as uncompressed/losslessly-compressed material, but luckily for you DV-PAL is 4:2:0 color subsampling, just like the majority of modern consumer formats (DVD, BD, most AVC-in-MP4 files, most broadcast streams, etc).
So unlike NTSC, whose 4:1:1 subsampling is an orphan and will result in additional loss of quality if/when you convert, DV-PAL's main issue is going to be just the DCT blocking artifacts from the 5.5:1 compression.
If you've already considered the resulting DV clips to be visually acceptable for casual watching, those are probably going to be good enough to use for conversion. Remember, Video 8 is not going to really benefit much from 4:2:2 or 4:4:4, because its color bandwidth was already so limited.

However, conversion does take some toll on the quality, so you may need to apply some de-blocking, or other denoising filtering in the conversion chain. And very likely, if you want to be going to modern AVC (or HEVC)-in MP4 files, you would probably want to be doing deinterlacing prior to other processes such as scaling, etc.

If you need to do step-wise intermediate work, save those intermediates as uncompressed/losslessly-compressed, so you need only lose 1 generation of quality throughout the workflow (at the end).

Ich hoffe, dass ich geholfen habe. Auf Wiedersehen!
(Ja, ich kann ein bisschen Deutsch sprechen).


Scott

[dellsam34]

Given the situation of the tapes and the technical skills required to do it, I would say just keep the DV files, maybe do some de-interlacing, resizing and encoding to h.264 at the highest quality or even lossless if possible.

[Marvolo]

Ich hoffe, dass ich geholfen habe.

You sure did. Thanks a lot! And nice that you can speak German!

Given the situation of the tapes and the technical skills required to do it, I would say just keep the DV files, maybe do some de-interlacing, resizing and encoding to h.264 at the highest quality or even lossless if possible.

Would this be something useful? https://www.topazlabs.com/video-enhance-ai

The demo vids on YouTube look astonishing!!

[dellsam34]

I've never personally used or attempted to use AI but it looks like it has merits from the demonstrations I've seen online.

[nicholasserra]

I capture all 8mm cassettes to lossless HuffYUV or UTVideo AND I do a firewire capture. I keep both passes. The lossless capture technically has more data. But sometimes you get some interesting results from the DV capture. As I see it, i'm doing two separate passes with totally different processes while I have access to the tape. Sometimes the firewire capture will even have higher frequency audio than the camera will output from the audio port. Sometimes the firewire process will handle dropouts worse. Etc etc.

Is it worth recapturing all your tapes lossless? Maybe. It's not a simple thing. Need a capture card that won't cause you headaches, audio sync issues, dropped frames. A TBC should be involved in the signal chain. And capturing via virtualdub can be tricky sometimes. Need a PC that's windows XP or 7 for driver issues. Etc.

[bantamfarmer]

I have a bunch of 8mm, Hi8, VHS and Digital 8 tapes. I picked up a Sony TRV-120 on Ebay and it captures everything, even the VHS using analog in. I use a Mac and the DV file quality IMHO for personal is more than adequate for archival.

[rrats]

Would this be something useful? https://www.topazlabs.com/video-enhance-ai

Not at all for analogue sources

[jamessoul]

I was wondering if it would be possible to use the luma data from the firewire captures and mask the color info from the svideo on top of it

[Marvolo]

Would this be something useful? https://www.topazlabs.com/video-enhance-ai

Not at all for analogue sources

How so?

[dellsam34]

I was wondering if it would be possible to use the luma data from the firewire captures and mask the color info from the svideo on top of it

It's a complicated and multi step process, You will be better off capturing both luma and chroma from S-Video.

[harrypm]

Was looking into stuff for Timecode on video 8 and found this post,

@Marvolo

If you are interested in current state of art archival for the analogue RF tape mediums then the VHS-Decode project might be what you're looking for as long as you can get a signal off the tape it can be duplicated by taking the analogue RF before its demodulated and capturing it to file with off-shelf ADC's and then run it through de-modulation and time base correction in software this would yield the best potential of the video format, at the cost of modifying playback device such as a deck or camcorder and an inexpensive CXADC setup, it's all fairly documented on the readme's/wiki now.

(Note about audio as you have audio in hopefully PCM uncompressed with your DV AVI files you can use that to mux, as audio decoding is not figured out but as Video8/High8 is one combined modulated signal capture wise so any RF caps preserve all Timecode/Audio/Video information)