Analog 8mm Capture Problem

Caruso wrote on 9/1/2003, 5:14 AM
A friend gave me an 8mm tape in Hi-8 format to edit for him. The piece was about 1hr and 45 min long, so, I used my Sony TRV103 (digi8 cam capable of playing/digitizing Hi8 format) to digitize the footage as I captured into V4d.

Result: Audio was ok, video was garbage - the video was present, but all scrambled.

I worked around this problem by dubbing from Hi8 to Digi8 (since my digi8 tapes are limited to an hour, I had to dub in two sections - I know I can get slightly longer 8mm tapes, but one hr is all I had on hand).

Capture went smoothly from the digi8 dubs - and I've always felt that the quality after dubbing was equal to or better than results I've experienced in the past when playing Hi8 through the TRV103 directly into Vegas.

I'm still curious, however, as to why I got the scrambled video in my direct Hi8 to Vegas attempts. I haven't tried it in a while (Hi8 -->Vegas), but it always seemed to work before VV2x/VV3X). I tried short sections of this tape (minute or two) in V4d, and the results were ok. I could monitor the video during capture of the entire tape, and it seemed to look ok. I've watched the entire tape. Except for the beginning and end, there are no blank spots.

So, what do you think could be causing this problem?

I don't intend to struggle with it. I've successfully digitized the tape by dubbing from Hi8 to Digi8, and have now moved on with my editing chores, but, I'm curious if anyone else has experienced this problem. Although I prefer dubbing to Hi8-->Vegas anyhow, skipping the dubbing (on stuff that I'm doing gratis) is a great time saver - when it works. I was surprised to encounter this problem.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Caruso

Comments

Caruso wrote on 9/1/2003, 5:21 AM
Oh, and, for what it's worth, I run V4d on a stock Compaq 7994 900 mHz machine with 128 meg memory. Only enhancements are my firewire drives (five of 'em), WinXPPro/SP1. Everything else is as it came from the factory (not that many years ago, LOL).

Caruso
farss wrote on 9/1/2003, 8:24 AM
Firstly I work part time for a company that regularly hires out D8 VCRs for capturing 8, Hi8 and D8 tapes. To date we haven't had a single complaint using it for this purpose. So I'm at a bit of a loss as to what has happened here.

I'm only guessing but it may have had something to do with just what was on the analogue tape to start with, sometimes analogue stuff seems to have poor sync or something like that so playing it in a digital deck causes grief, the A/D converters loose it briefly so what was a minor and perhaps unnoticable problem gets turned into a bigger one.

Now when you dubbed from one tape to another the recorder may have had some degree of analogue processing going on that cleaned up the signal before it hit the A/D circuits.

I'd be interesting to try just going out of the Hi8 deck through the camera without recording onto tape if you get what I mean.


I've had a similar wierd thing happen, I've recorded from 8mm film to SVHS and then captured that via a D8 camera into VV. Works very well except for an occasional glitch that causes a multi colored flash on the left hand side of the screen.

Now I thought, what the heck, I'll just cutout the offending frame or two. Well I cannot find any frames that contain it. I can cut out a number of frames and where it happens remains in the same place on the timeline! It mostly occurs near where there is a very sudden jump in video level, only way to get rid of it is to use a 6 or so frame fade to black on both sides of the cut.
Caruso wrote on 9/4/2003, 4:33 AM
Farss:
Thanks for the reply. My D8 Cam allows me to pass through from computer to the destination vcr, but will not allow me to pass through the other way, from Hi8/8mm analog to computer. It's supposed to be able to play 8mm/hi8 and send the signal over the firewire in digital form. So, I can't test your suggestion to play from the hi8 through the D8 into Vegas.

I tend to agree that there is probably some glitch that's not noticeable on the hi8 footage that disrupts the A-D conversion in a way that causes Vegas to scramble the footage. You can preview the video during capture and it looks fine.

Just this morning, I had to capture the last 10 minutes of this same tape. Did it without dubbing, just using the D8 to play the analog footage. Worked fine, although Vegas reported 6 dropped frames (not enough for me to worry about).

Someone out there might know the cause of this (minor) problem. Let me know.

Thanks.

Caruso
kentwolf wrote on 9/4/2003, 1:57 PM
I just got thorugh capturing nearly 30, 2 hour 8MM tapes via the Canopus ADVC-100 without any problems at all. Both video and audio were perfect.
mark_astro wrote on 9/4/2003, 10:00 PM
Here's my experience with the same camera. I have a bunch of old analog 8mm tapes I want to digitize and thought to do just what you did. I used scenalyzer live for capture via a generic firewire card on a p4 system with win2k. I though everything went OK after doing a single 2hr capture (to one dv avi file). This was done with the MC codec purchased separately (before I owned vegas).

When I looked carefully, I found that audio slowly drifted off sync so that, by the time I was at the end of the capture, I was about 15 frames off. I've subsequently read claims that the audio clock on Sony camera's is off from 48kHz by just about the right amount to explain this.

My solution was to by a Canopus ADVC-100 external analog-DV-analog converter. This locks audio and video and does a great job. I play analog out from my 103 to the converter, then take the digital into the capture app via firewire. This works the other way too, so I don't need the camera in the loop to copy my edited projects to analog devices like VCR's. So far, this has worked flawlessly, with no setup whatsoever. The only minor inconvenience is that when I capture, there is no camera control (only when I'm capturing analog, that is -- digital I do the same as always direct from camera throught firewire).

Not directly related to your problem, but interesting I hope.
Mark