Be Excellent To Each Other

So, Helen decides that she wants to digitise all her old camcorder footage from the last decade. I have a box that takes composite input (red, white, yellow) and outputs via firewire to DV, no problem, the capturing part is sorted.

Now our old camcorder is an 8mm video type and all the tapes that were recorded on that, work fine. The problem is, there's a stack of tapes that were recorded on her mum's old camcorder which I believe was a Digital8 (it was stolen in Kuala Lumpur and replaced with the plain 8mm). All of the tapes recorded on the old camera are distorted slightly when played through the plain 8mm. They seem sped up by about 50% and the sound is weird (think chipmunks) although the timecode counts up normally.

Now, I didn't get into video until MiniDV so I'm clueless here. Any suggestions, Hive Mind? There's a shiny sixpence* for the best answer.

* No actual sixpence will be provided

Buy a suitable camera from Ebay or use a transfer service.

I've used these guys for cine before now:

http://www.alivestudios.co.uk/

is it simply because the tapes were recorded on a digital8? Why do they even play at all then?

No idea. Hi8 passed me by frankly and it isn't knowlege I've ever needed.

I have no practical knowledge, but Wikipedia suggests Hi8 and Digital8 were semi-proprietary extensions on top of Video8 that used the same tapes but different data on them. What Chinny said, you'll need a compatible player, either from eBay or in the hands of a transfer contractor.

Damn. I'll have to speak to my mates in the Uni AV department and see if they have a dusty old camera I can nab. They don't usually hang onto obsolete stuff for long though.

Thanks for the help guys, and sorry for exposing an alarming gap in Beex hive mind knowledge bank!

There was a Yellow Pages advert dealing with this sort of thing, wasn't there?

Meanwhile:


Shiny shiny shiny, need badly, can't afford.

Gah!

Silly MaliA. Davpaz no want to spend money on 25 hours of Helen's nephews drinking from baby bottles and playing PEEKABOO.

Wait, they're my nephews now!

Every millimetre of that camera is designed to convey a very clear message to me, and that message is, "you can't afford this, and if you could, you'd have no fucking clue how to use it".

Flip to 'Auto'. Press red button. Call AV guys.

I can use it. Sony tend to keep the same ergonomics (is that the right word) between their cameras. So PD150 owners could pick up a Z1 and feel at home. Likewise I had a blast on an EX1 (as pictured) last year and also felt at home. To be honest it was the extra weight and the different balance of the camera that I found strange.

It shoots 720p and can do realtime slowmo by doubling the recording frame rate and then playing back at normal speed. WANT WANT WANT!

In other news I might finally get to use my dolly tomorrow.

The good thing about Sony's lower end pro cameras is that they do have auto and it is of use. Many of them have 1 touch autofocus so you hit a button and it finds the focus and you can then manually adjust from there. And the autofocus mechanism actually works properly rarely making a mistake. You see consumer units where the focus goes hunting at the first sign of any change in the scene.

There is also auto iris and auto shutter but anyone caught using them needs shooting.