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  1. Hello everyone,

    I have a DCR-PC8E camcorder alongside a whole stack of old family recordings that I've been trying to digitalize for the last couple of months. Unfortunately, I've tried just about everything (within my budget) and I'm starting to lose hope.
    I'm hoping that the experts here can help me finally figure out what it is that I need to do to get these recordings digitalized.
    The contents of these tapes are of high sentimental value to me and my family, and I don't want to give up on preserving them just yet.

    Originally I was advised to post this in the mac subforum, but I've since tried (in desperation) a PC too, so I'm writing this thread on the generic capturing subforum.


    Here is what I have tried so far:
    Using a Mac Mini (Late 2011 - 2012) with a FireWire 4-pin to 800 cable:
    • QuickTime Video: Video shows and records, but it randomly stops recording (usually between tape cuts, but not always), when it does, it usually causes it to lose all but the last 3 minutes of the recording. Impossible to record a whole tape with it, even segments proves to be a labour-intensive process with subpar results.
    • PlayMemories Home: Does nothing at all, can't even tell a camera is connected.

    Using a Windows 10 computer, with a "PCI-E 1X to 16X 1394 DV Video Capture Card" and the latest 1394 legacy drivers (for windows 8):
    • HDVSplit: Does not detect anything.
    • WinDV: Does not detect anything.
    The card turns on, or at least the LED does, maybe the cable is the issue? Or maybe my PC is just too new...

    I have also tried asking a local video shop if they could do it. But the price they pitched me was well outside my means.

    If anyone has some advice or clue as to what I can do to finally get these tapes safely digitalized, I'd be very thankful!

    PS. This is my first real thread on this forum, let me know if I did anything wrong.
    Last edited by Hugo Cortell; 28th Mar 2024 at 20:46. Reason: Better clarity, also found the name of that one really crappy program sony made
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  2. Capturing Memories dellsam34's Avatar
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    HDVSplit is for HDV tapes only, Have you tried ScLive yet? Also make sure the camcorder is set to DV out and all permissions in MS Windows privacy are enabled.
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  3. Member DB83's Avatar
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    The issue may well be the 1394 card you acquired.

    Was this the card you actually bought ? If so it has a via chip and it is known that these chips have issues with Win10 (even with legacy drivers)


    Frankly, you get what you pay for. Look for a card with a TI (Texas Instrument) chip but expect to pay 3 times the quoted (not discounted) price.
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    Originally Posted by DB83
    The issue may well be the 1394 card you acquired.

    Was this the card you actually bought ? If so it has a via chip and it is known that these chips have issues with Win10 (even with legacy drivers)


    Frankly, you get what you pay for. Look for a card with a TI (Texas Instrument) chip but expect to pay 3 times the quoted (not discounted) price.
    In my view, all of that is inaccurate. Firstly, cheap Firewire cards work. I have one that cost less than US$15.

    Re TI verses VIA, David Knarr recommends VIA chipsets for Win 10; see step 6 of his process for installing firewire on Win 8 and 10. In particular, note the chipsets of the images of the cards he recommends.

    To expand on dellsam's permissions comment:

    Check that Windows has been given permission to use your camera and microphone:

    Windows Settings>Privacy & Security>Camera>turn on camera access and lower down the page, turn on “Let desktop apps access your camera”.

    Do the same for the microphone (click on Privacy and Security in the left margin to return to the main screen to access the Microphone).
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  5. Member DB83's Avatar
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    ^^ Strange since only a few months ago you were stating that Win10 had issues with VIA yet Win11 had fixed the issue.

    And, frankly, I am not alone in opinion about TI chipsets as opposed to VIA as there are tons of posts on here that echo this.


    Sure. Cheap cards may work. But there is cheap and there is cheap. And Aliexpress is cheap.
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    Originally Posted by DB83
    Strange since only a few months ago you were stating that Win10 had issues with VIA yet Win11 had fixed the issue.
    Let's have the link to that. I'll review that post and amend it if necessary. I recall saying that a TI card would not work in my Win 11 computer but the VIA card did. My old computer had a built-in FW card which may have been TI, but that is beside the point. and my most recent post on it pointed to David Knarr's comments.

    Originally Posted by DB83
    And, frankly, I am not alone in opinion about TI chipsets as opposed to VIA as there are tons of posts on here that echo this.
    Again, a couple of links please, if tons are available.
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  7. Member DB83's Avatar
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    I'll just send one. Do your own search for others (and you replied to this topic)

    https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/402268-IEEE-1394-%28Firewire%29-card-recommendation-please
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    @DB83, I will not be searching for anything to justify or validate your criticism of me.

    As for the topic you did link to, that is not relevant to this topic because the person never used the card in a Win 10 machine. Furthermore, it would seem that the card they got wasn't the one usually_quiet suggested (Molex connector).

    @Hugo_Cortell, have a peruse of my website here. Compare your Device manager setup. In particular, your camera, when you've plugged it in, should appear under Imaging devices. I'm not exactly sure what it will say, but there should be an entry of some kind indicating that your camera is being seen by Windows.
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  9. Member The_Doman's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by Hugo Cortell View Post
    • HDVSplit: Does not detect anything.
    • WinDV: Does not detect anything.
    The card turns on, or at least the LED does, maybe the cable is the issue? Or maybe my PC is just too new...
    Before any program can capture anything the card and DV/Camera device should be listed correctly in the Windows device manager.
    Did you check there what it is showing to you?

    Another possible option for capturing/recording is to get an older/refurb (business) laptop with firewire.
    Often they can be acquired very cheaply, at least here in my (PAL) country The Netherlands.
    I have a few Dell Latitude e6410's which work flawlessly capturing from camera/DV converters with ScenalyzerLive and Windows 7/10/11.
    It uses the Ricoh OHCI 1394 firewire chipset.
    Having a separate PC/laptop for capturing is very convenient without having to use/change your main system.

    Also when using firewire i still warn people against the so called "hot-plugging".
    Originally Posted by The_Doman View Post
    And be careful when connecting firewire devices to a PC.
    Specially the firewire with Sony camcorders are prone to get damaged when connected to a working PC.
    Best to connect everything when powered off.
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  10. Hey everyone, just letting you know that I'll issue a proper set of replies later today. Sorry to not have been able to reply earlier!

    Hello, updating this post (a second time): I'll be able to try some of the suggestions out tomorrow (3/4/24), I mostly have my computer back in a functional state.
    Last edited by Hugo Cortell; 2nd Apr 2024 at 16:53. Reason: Second update
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  11. Rather than creating one thousand replies, I'll make one big reply post. Summary at the end.


    Originally Posted by dellsam34 View Post
    HDVSplit is for HDV tapes only, Have you tried ScLive yet? Also make sure the camcorder is set to DV out and all permissions in MS Windows privacy are enabled.
    I had not, but now I have (it says it is the trial version, I presume that is fine?), and unfortunately it says that there is no camera connected.
    The camera usually sends DV out automatically, but I made sure to manually enable "A/V -> DV OUT" in the settings menu this time too.
    Also did the privacy settings thing that dellsam34 and Alwyn suggested.

    Originally Posted by DB83 View Post
    The issue may well be the 1394 card you acquired.

    Was this the card you actually bought ? If so it has a via chip and it is known that these chips have issues with Win10 (even with legacy drivers)


    Frankly, you get what you pay for. Look for a card with a TI (Texas Instrument) chip but expect to pay 3 times the quoted (not discounted) price.
    I looked at prices in my region and... it's outside my budget at the moment. I might try it as a last resort.

    Originally Posted by Alwyn View Post
    Originally Posted by DB83
    The issue may well be the 1394 card you acquired.

    Was this the card you actually bought ? If so it has a via chip and it is known that these chips have issues with Win10 (even with legacy drivers)


    Frankly, you get what you pay for. Look for a card with a TI (Texas Instrument) chip but expect to pay 3 times the quoted (not discounted) price.
    In my view, all of that is inaccurate. Firstly, cheap Firewire cards work. I have one that cost less than US$15.

    Re TI verses VIA, David Knarr recommends VIA chipsets for Win 10; see step 6 of his process for installing firewire on Win 8 and 10. In particular, note the chipsets of the images of the cards he recommends.

    To expand on dellsam's permissions comment:

    Check that Windows has been given permission to use your camera and microphone:

    Windows Settings>Privacy & Security>Camera>turn on camera access and lower down the page, turn on “Let desktop apps access your camera”.

    Do the same for the microphone (click on Privacy and Security in the left margin to return to the main screen to access the Microphone).
    Thanks for the heads-up on the privacy settings. Unfortunately, it did not help
    The camera app itself also says that nothing is connected.

    Originally Posted by Alwyn View Post
    @DB83, I will not be searching for anything to justify or validate your criticism of me.

    As for the topic you did link to, that is not relevant to this topic because the person never used the card in a Win 10 machine. Furthermore, it would seem that the card they got wasn't the one usually_quiet suggested (Molex connector).

    @Hugo_Cortell, have a peruse of my website here. Compare your Device manager setup. In particular, your camera, when you've plugged it in, should appear under Imaging devices. I'm not exactly sure what it will say, but there should be an entry of some kind indicating that your camera is being seen by Windows.
    From the device manager:
    • Driver is the correct one (legacy).
    • Under imaging devices it says "Sony DV Camcorder"
    As something to note: While I was writing this part of the response, the camera fell asleep, the bluescreen says "DV IN", which disappears when the tape is played. As mentioned earlier, I explicitly have it as DV out, so it's probably just something that shows if there is no tape playing but a DV cable is connected.

    Originally Posted by The_Doman View Post
    Originally Posted by Hugo Cortell View Post
    • HDVSplit: Does not detect anything.
    • WinDV: Does not detect anything.
    The card turns on, or at least the LED does, maybe the cable is the issue? Or maybe my PC is just too new...
    Before any program can capture anything the card and DV/Camera device should be listed correctly in the Windows device manager.
    Did you check there what it is showing to you?

    Another possible option for capturing/recording is to get an older/refurb (business) laptop with firewire.
    Often they can be acquired very cheaply, at least here in my (PAL) country The Netherlands.
    I have a few Dell Latitude e6410's which work flawlessly capturing from camera/DV converters with ScenalyzerLive and Windows 7/10/11.
    It uses the Ricoh OHCI 1394 firewire chipset.
    Having a separate PC/laptop for capturing is very convenient without having to use/change your main system.

    Also when using firewire i still warn people against the so called "hot-plugging".
    Originally Posted by The_Doman View Post
    And be careful when connecting firewire devices to a PC.
    Specially the firewire with Sony camcorders are prone to get damaged when connected to a working PC.
    Best to connect everything when powered off.
    It does show up on the device list, but the software does not see it. Privacy settings should allow it to, though.
    As for the laptop, outside of my budget at the moment. I'm on a rather thin shoestring budget already

    Thank you for the tip on hot-plugging! It seems though that I'll have to take my chances. The PC won't find the camera if I boot with it connected, I need to unplug and re-plug for it to show under my devices. It also can't turn off if the camera is connected, it gets stuck on the shutdown screen.





    Post End & Summary


    The drivers seem to be working, the camera shows up as a device on the device manager. But even though the system can see it, no app seems to be able to get information from it, not even the generic camera app.

    This is the end of the post. A bummer that I did not immediately find an answer , but I am rather hopeful as the replies I've received so far are of very good quality, it gives me hope that eventually the last piece of the puzzle will fall in place.

    Thank you to everyone that replied, particularly for your patience with me, regardless of why, I should not have taken this long to reply to the people who are willing to help me out. Thank you.
    I'll be sure to be quicker to try things out and send a reply next time.
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  12. Capturing Memories dellsam34's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by Hugo Cortell View Post
    It says it is the trial version, I presume that is fine?
    Get your end life license from here for free.
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    To the OP: Have you tried your VIA PCIe card with the “standard” IEEE 1394 drivers vs. the “legacy” drivers? My experience with Win10 and the FireWire cards I have is that my TI chip cards will work with the legacy driver and my non-TI card won’t.

    That card is an LSI chip based card and it works fine with the driver Win10 installs automatically which is not the legacy driver. Both of these cards are PCI cards, not PCIe so that might make a difference.

    So if you haven’t tried to just let Windows use the driver it wants rather than forcing the legacy driver, it would be worth a try. If that doesn’t work and your computer is old enough to have a free PCI slot, I’d recommend finding an LSI chip card on eBay. They are cheap.

    This search less the quotes brings up others: “(dell, adeptec, lsi) (firewire, ieee)”

    BW
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    Originally Posted by Hugo Cortell View Post
    Thank you for the tip on hot-plugging! It seems though that I'll have to take my chances. The PC won't find the camera if I boot with it connected, I need to unplug and re-plug for it to show under my devices. It also can't turn off if the camera is connected, it gets stuck on the shutdown screen.
    That's not how it all should work of course.
    Specially if you can not shut down your PC when the camera is connected (unpowered too?) is awkward indeed.

    Possible you can try to disable the fast startup feature so your devices are initialized properly when starting your system:
    How To Geek: Shutting Down Doesn’t Fully Shut Down Windows 10 (But Restarting Does)

    But as you wrote you also have issues with DV on your mac, which should be straightforward what i read, i start to wonder if there is a problem with the camera itself?
    Cable, power supply or you need a better working app on the MAC platform?
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  15. Originally Posted by dellsam34 View Post
    Originally Posted by Hugo Cortell View Post
    It says it is the trial version, I presume that is fine?
    Get your end life license from here for free.
    Thank you, I'll get one right away.

    Originally Posted by BW37 View Post
    To the OP: Have you tried your VIA PCIe card with the “standard” IEEE 1394 drivers vs. the “legacy” drivers? My experience with Win10 and the FireWire cards I have is that my TI chip cards will work with the legacy driver and my non-TI card won’t.

    That card is an LSI chip based card and it works fine with the driver Win10 installs automatically which is not the legacy driver. Both of these cards are PCI cards, not PCIe so that might make a difference.

    So if you haven’t tried to just let Windows use the driver it wants rather than forcing the legacy driver, it would be worth a try. If that doesn’t work and your computer is old enough to have a free PCI slot, I’d recommend finding an LSI chip card on eBay. They are cheap.

    This search less the quotes brings up others: “(dell, adeptec, lsi) (firewire, ieee)”

    BW
    I gave that a shot, and unfortunately it did not work. Thanks for the heads-up on the LSI chips, I'll look into them too!

    Originally Posted by The_Doman View Post
    Originally Posted by Hugo Cortell View Post
    Thank you for the tip on hot-plugging! It seems though that I'll have to take my chances. The PC won't find the camera if I boot with it connected, I need to unplug and re-plug for it to show under my devices. It also can't turn off if the camera is connected, it gets stuck on the shutdown screen.
    That's not how it all should work of course.
    Specially if you can not shut down your PC when the camera is connected (unpowered too?) is awkward indeed.

    Possible you can try to disable the fast startup feature so your devices are initialized properly when starting your system:
    How To Geek: Shutting Down Doesn’t Fully Shut Down Windows 10 (But Restarting Does)

    But as you wrote you also have issues with DV on your mac, which should be straightforward what i read, i start to wonder if there is a problem with the camera itself?
    Cable, power supply or you need a better working app on the MAC platform?
    For the mac, the issue is hard to diagnose. Unfortunately, the computer is old (old enough to have a firewire port), so most common software to capture DV footage does not run on it.
    With the QuickTime Video program, I can't really say for sure what the issue is, but it seems to suffer from both receiving stop signals (or whatever they are called, apologies, I'm not very well versed in the terminology) from the camera, and that it may be that the program can't handle creating files past X size (which DV recording quickly reaches).
    It might indeed be easier to do it with the mac, since it actually receives a signal, so if you have any software recommendations that work on my OS version, I'd be very happy to give them a try!
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  16. Hello, it's me again. I've been trying a lot of things and hacks to try to get it to work, but alas it has been to no avail. Including building my own program for it.

    In the time since, I've got hold of an old office PC, on which I plan to install either Windows Vista or XP in hopes that maybe an older OS handles DV drivers better. I'll report back with my results.

    For now, I'll go with XP, since the screenshot of HDVSplit makes it seem like the program was made prior to Vista. Wish me luck, folks.
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    since the screenshot of HDVSplit makes it seem like the program
    As mentioned above, if you're transferring DV recordings, you need Scenalyzer or WinDV, not HDVSplit. HDVSplit is only for HDV recordings.

    Good luck!
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  18. Originally Posted by Alwyn View Post
    since the screenshot of HDVSplit makes it seem like the program
    As mentioned above, if you're transferring DV recordings, you need Scenalyzer or WinDV, not HDVSplit. HDVSplit is only for HDV recordings.

    Good luck!
    My bad, sorry. Just grabbed a random program to use as a reference and forgot this wasn't the correct one. Thanks for the reminder.

    So far, Windows XP has failed to install, I think my RAM is too new. But my older 250MB sticks of RAM that I've kept for the occasion don't fit the slots, so now I'm trying Vista. So far no blue screens.

    Update: It boots! I only have an A6-6400K APU and 2gigs of RAM though, but it should be enough..? The drive is a 500gb SSD.
    Last edited by Hugo Cortell; 10th Jul 2024 at 20:35. Reason: gave update
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  19. Good news, Windows Vista works, and it detects the camera (as an "AVC Device").
    Bad news, neither ScenalyzerLive or WinDV seem to find the device. It does show up on the device admin panel too. So close, yet so far.
    Last edited by Hugo Cortell; 11th Jul 2024 at 19:13. Reason: Removed outdated information
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  20. Pardon my language folks, but holy bingle, I DID IT!
    After a handful of system restarts it just magically started working on its own! And to think all it took was installing Windows Vista on a computer with the appropriate specs.

    Now that the camera can interface with the computer, the question becomes: Which program is best? To my knowledge, there are three options:
    1. WinDV seems like the most straight forward option, no idea how the quality compares to other programs.
    2. SCLive looks well featured, no idea how different it is from WinDV. Needs a key?
    3. Windows Vista's Built-In Tape Video Recorder?!?!?! This is apparently a thing, image attached further below.

    My goal is mainly to get the best quality possible. These are precious memories for me and my family, and I am willing to go to great lengths to ensure that they are preserved digitally as well as possible. Storage space is very cheap nowadays, and I'm not afraid to use it.
    It would also be nice if the program can be left to run on its own while I work or do whatever else. I might still choose to do some light or looseless compression after the fact.

    Here is the Windows thing I mentioned (apologies, it is in Spanish, translation below):
    Image
    [Attachment 80646 - Click to enlarge]

    It says:

    IMPORT VIDEO
    (name, location, etc)
    FORMAT:
    • Audio & Video Interlaced (only one file)
    • Windows Media Video (only one file)
    • Windows Media Video (one file per scene)
    Folks, we are on the last stretch, all hurdles are clear, and only the million-dollar question of what software to use remains.
    I leave the decision up to your wisdom and experience.
    Thank you to everyone who has helped me make it this far.
    Last edited by Hugo Cortell; 11th Jul 2024 at 19:29. Reason: Removed [CENTER] tag for aesthetic reasons
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    Woo hoo! Well done.

    Scenalyzer has more features, mainly in that you can edit (split, join) your clips after you've transferred them. Otherwise, it and WinDV are exactly the same quality-wise; they both simply "transfer" the video files from your camcorder to your PC. I'm not familiar with the Windows apps; I would steer clear. I have guides for using WinDV and Scenalyzer on my site.

    Note that you can set either to transfer every scene, scenes for each day, or one huge scene of the whole tape.

    DV is 13GB per hour.

    Re the Scenalyzer key, see post #12 by Dellsam43.
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  22. Originally Posted by Alwyn View Post
    Woo hoo! Well done.

    Scenalyzer has more features, mainly in that you can edit (split, join) your clips after you've transferred them. Otherwise, it and WinDV are exactly the same quality-wise; they both simply "transfer" the video files from your camcorder to your PC. I'm not familiar with the Windows apps; I would steer clear. I have guides for using WinDV and Scenalyzer on my site.

    Note that you can set either to transfer every scene, scenes for each day, or one huge scene of the whole tape.

    DV is 13GB per hour.

    Re the Scenalyzer key, see post #12 by Dellsam43.
    Most excelent, thank you for the information! I'll be reading the guides on your website too.
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    For me, VidCap from MAGIX Vegas 19 is always the best and most stable. It may work after the trial version ends, as it is a separate program.

    I recently tested CaptureFlux -- notorious frame drops.
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  24. Hello everyone!

    I ran my first proper test today (had some delays due to a monitor dying), it works! I used Scenalyzer and it worked wonderfully.
    The ability to combine scenes in real time is great! My family is thrilled to see all these old videos. I could not be happier.

    I've got a question for everyone (though perhaps this should be its own thread?), what's the best way to apply lossless compression to these videos?
    I'm no video expert, so correct me if I am wrong, but it seems like it should be doable to cut down a 10-minute video from 1gb to around 250mb without any loss. I've been trying with FFMPEG, but I've been getting discouraging results.

    Of course, as I said before, storage space is cheap, while memories are valuable. So if need be, I'll just buy more hard drives. But if I can greatly drive down the video file size for little to no loss, then I'd certainly welcome it.

    Any way, thanks once again to everyone for helping me so far.
    PS. On the topic of Scenalyzer, what does the "tape" field do? I left it empty. Is it just for video metadata? Or can it be used to automatically load saved scenes based on the tape name?
    Last edited by Hugo Cortell; 23rd Jul 2024 at 20:29. Reason: formatting
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    Great stuff.

    I'm no video expert, so correct me if I am wrong, but it seems like it should be doable to cut down a 10-minute video from 1gb to around 250mb without any loss. I've been trying with FFMPEG, but I've been getting discouraging results.
    You'll definitely be able to do that. MP4 (H264 codec) will get you down to ~4GB per hour from the 13GB DV format.

    One of the command line experts hopefully will guide you with FFMPEG. Otherwise, there's the whole gamut of GUIs, from simple ones such as Handbrake to fully-fledged video editors where you can edit your 60 minute tape into segments, give it titles and edit the junk out. I'm doing my family's 2003 tapes (about 15) and have, so far, split those up into 40 separate files covering each "event". Not ideal having a one hour file that you have to skip through to find that party that's around 3/4 of the way in.


    On the topic of Scenalyzer, what does the "tape" field do? I left it empty. Is it just for video metadata? Or can it be used to automatically load saved scenes based on the tape name?
    It was a long time ago, but I think the "Tape" field was part of the tape indexing system, where Scenalyzer saved details of each tape via the index so you could re-insert a tape later on and not have to index it again. If you're not indexing the tape, ie you're just doing an actual capture, you don't need to worry about it.
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    Originally Posted by Hugo Cortell View Post
    what's the best way to apply lossless compression to these videos?
    Lossless? The only good lossless method is to leave it as is -- in DV format. Any recompression to another format (lossless) will just make the file bigger.

    For conversion to MP4 use Hybrid with QTGMC.
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  27. An update on how things are going: still figuring out the best way to compress these videos.
    Using handbrake, here is what I have so far:
    • 256: Reduces the file size drastically while preserving quality to a degree that it is mostly imperceptible. It is also blazing fast, at over 700 frames per second to encode. However, 256 can only do progressive, so I must either keep the video permanently interlaced, or encode it already deinterlaced. I'm not happy with this at all, as I would prefer to keep it interlaced but preserve the flags and metadata necessary to allow for real-time deinterlacing by the video player (best of both worlds). I still don't know what the best settings are for deinterlacing, everything comes out blurry. But interlaced video is also quite an eyesore.
    • 254: Supports interlaced video. But it encodes at a speed of 0.05 Frames Per Second, the file size is drastically higher, and there is a noticeable quality loss.

    At least I am not stuck. But oh boy, I sure wish there were comprehensive guides on this whole deinterlacing thing (and maybe detelecine-ing? Unsure if it applies to DV, technically DV is recorded onto tape).

    Well, I'll keep at it. I've already got a foot past the goalpost, I just need to drag my other leg through!
    Last edited by Hugo Cortell; 21st Aug 2024 at 05:03. Reason: Turns out EEDI2 was hiding under bob
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  28. I finished earlier a discussion with a friend who works in film and I have settled on the preset "DV Compressed (Deinterlaced)". I suppose a little quality loss is acceptable when considering the vastly superior encoding times, even if still regrettable.

    I'll share below the three presets I made for DV video, I hope that it comes of use to someone in the future.
    Code:
    {
    	"ChildrenArray": [
    	{
    		"AlignAVStart": false,
    		"AudioCopyMask": [
    		"copy:aac"
    		],
    		"AudioEncoderFallback": "av_aac",
    		"AudioLanguageList": [],
    		"AudioList": [
    		{
    			"AudioBitrate": 256,
    			"AudioCompressionLevel": 0,
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    		"PicturePAR": "none",
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    	],
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    	"PresetName": "Analogue Media",
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    }
    Thank you to everyone who has helped me reach my goal. Now I can go ahead and digitalize all these wonderful memories to share with my family.
    Quote Quote  



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