Sony GV-D200 8mm walkman--help please

ronatsony wrote on 12/20/2004, 5:37 PM

my old (1989) Sony Handycam CCD-V11 8mm camcorder broke, it will only playback black & white. i have probably 8 hours of old 8mm film with i copied using this V11, plus other video which contains the kids going back many years.

i'm thinking of buying the Sony GV-D200 to playback these old casettes, via it 1394 output and using MS/DVDA to burn the DVD's. i've read on the VideoHelp forums where folks really like to use this as a storage for their video. Onecall has it "on sale" now for 549 and B&K Photo sells it for $529. the cheapest on Ebay is over $600. i could always resell it on Ebay for $500 or so and not loose much if i don't like it.

My question is--- has anyone used one of these to transfer old 8mm (not Hi8) via the firewire (seems the most lossless way to transfer) using MS4a, into an .avi file? and what quality did you get? do you use to archive your video files?
any other pointers or suggestions will be appreciated,
ron

Comments

desertman wrote on 12/20/2004, 6:52 PM

I bought the Sony TRV460 to transfer a bunch of 8mm tapes. It does Direct8, Hi8, and 8mm. It has firewire support. It did a pretty good job. It will also digitize NTSC signals coming into it and put it out the firewire.

Randy

Steve Grisetti wrote on 12/21/2004, 7:51 AM

It's a nice looking video deck, Ron -- but for that money why not just buy a nice, new digital8 camcorder? You can buy a new Sony (starting at $350) and not only play back your 8mm and Hi8 tapes, but you can shoot all new video at nearly broadcast quality!

gogiants wrote on 12/21/2004, 10:37 AM

You say that the old 8mm camera will "only playback in black and white". Is this true only on it's on-board display, or is this also true when you hook it up to a TV?

Reason I ask is that if you want to get out of 8mm entirely you could do this: buy a new DV camera that has digital pass through and use that to convert your 8mm tapes, using your old camera to feed into the new DV camera. Just a thought if for any reason you'd want to go to DV instead of digital 8.

ronatsony wrote on 12/21/2004, 11:57 AM

sorry guys for the lack of info from me...
My old cc stopped recording about 2 months ago---maybe longer, but at that time i wanted to burn DVD's from my old 8mm tapes. i copied a tape onto my Panny E100 pvr and it was in black & white. that was when i discovered the cc was toast--and when i smell inside the casette holder, it smells like a capacitor is leaking or something. this is when i decided to search for a replacement cc. I bought a Panny GS400.

Sunday i spent all day playing the 8mm tapes and recording onto DVmini tapes on my GS400 to save them. i Captured one of them into MS4a and played around with editing it--but as i said they are b&w. the original content was color, so that's why i want a way to play them back. looking at ebay, i thought a sony 8mm player, walkman, etc would work fine. so would the camcorders mentioned here i also read where folks use these GV-D200 players/recorders for video storage and data backup---yea i could do the same thing with my gs400, but i believe it is best "saved" for recording and then a single play back, rather than using it to store video.

does any of this make sense???? Sorry for the rambling--and lack of background info.

My intitial thought about asking, was if anyone here used something like this for what i want to do---copy old 8mm tapes and then use the deck for video/data storage in Digital8 format.
And how it works---- espically with 1394... i probably did not make that very clear either :)
thanks for the help,
ron

Hunter wrote on 12/30/2004, 2:45 PM

I've used the the D-200 and yes it does a good job, I did have tape that audio messed up on for 20-30 seconds.
But will you need it more then just your tapes? Now that you have the GS400 (nice camera) why mess with 8mm?
For me I would find a working 8mm camera you can use and transfer your tapes.

ronatsony wrote on 12/30/2004, 4:31 PM

thanks Hunter for the reply.

i have taken others advice and i'm probably going to buy a Sony TRV460 vice the D200 for about $200 cheaper. all i want it for is to copy the 8mm tapes i have now, into MS, so i can edit them and then burn some dvd's for my kids. some of the 8mm tapes are copies of 8mm film (which is also history) which is pretty poor, but it does have pix of my youngest son as an infant. as mentioned my old 8mm camcorder is broke, so i have no way to play the 8mm tapes. i'll either give the 460 to one of my kids--or sell it on Ebay. my GS400 shoots some nice video so i don't know what i would ever use the 460 for.....

thanks for the help,
ron