got it for €50, everything works and even the original battery holds for one and a half hours while recording which is great

PolarBoyz.Production @ IG

Hi all,

Currently on a trip and using a Panasonic PV-GS31 miniDV camcorder to film it. Well, something happened and it suddenly stopped reading my tape correctly. I have about 20 minutes of footage at this point, but the timecode across the top reset to all 0s. So when hitting the record button at one point, I noticed it was counting up from 0 again, as if I never used this tape, despite it being 20 minutes in. Confused, I started to rewind it and was met with a “push reset switch” error. Eventually got back to my hotel and did just that, which seem to temporarily fix the issue of being able to fast forward or rewind the tape.

The actual playback still seems to have gone bad. If I rewind the tape all the way back to the beginning, where I’d expect to have around 20 mins of footage displayed on the timecode, it instead shows all 0s, no matter where I fast forward or rewind the tape to.

I can still record fine on it, but as I noted, the time starts back up from 0. Then if I try to rewind a bit and actually play it back, it’s just a blue screen, and the timecode is eternally stuck at the amount of time that I had just recorded for. The video shows me playing a test recording of 4 seconds where nothing is actually playing. Then when I try to rewind it, I coincidentally get the “reset” error again. Sigh. I’ll post a photo of the inside in the comments if I can. Can’t seem to post both a photo and video on here from mobile.

Is this indicative of a dirty drum/read head? Was thinking of trying the rubbing alcohol and printer paper method tomorrow morning to see if I can fix this, but wanted a sanity check here. Super super bummed, not gonna lie, but I’m certain at least that the recorded footage hasn’t actually been lost off the tape… right?

Does anyone know what might be causing this? It's a Canon video camera that uses MiniDV tapes. The noise/static is constant (it doesn't change), and it looks like the video is playing underneath it. I'm seeing the same issue on multiple tapes, so I think the problem is probably with the camera.

Hey so A lot of you asked for the camcorder and other stuff, so I'm gonna show right here

Help, idk how to work the Mini Dvr, I am kinda new to VHS I won't lie, going at it for 1 year, I was fed up with the tapes so I wanted to switch to Digital, and I bought the mini DVR. It was cheap and affordable, I bought A cable for it but I don't know what to do, I'm recording videos but they are black screen with a glitched out Adio that rings my ears. I am stuck on a road block cuz I don't have no more money and I watched like 10 YouTube videos about it and NONE of them made sense, either they skip over how they got to the menu in the first place, or already expect the viers to have sandering equipment. Like UGHHHHH. Sorry I'm ranting but it's true, I just need help to help figure out how to put VHS on digital format without breaking the bank or being an absolute dread to do. I need to know what cable to use , like specific and how to pull up the menu in the PC, then what format to fix, than plug it in the fucking Camera and finally get the shot.

Hey everyone,

I just finished digitizing 55 MiniDV cassettes from my dad's old Panasonic camcorder, basically our whole childhood archive. While doing it, I built a small toolkit for capture checking, double captures, DVRescue workflows, stitching, deinterlacing comparisons, metadata fixing, and final MP4 access copies.

Repo: github.com/Lukhausen/minidv-preservation-toolkit

The most important things I learned

1. Rewind the tape fully before capture

Go all the way to the end, then all the way back to the start. For me this actually reduced artifacts. Old tapes that sat around for years behaved worse when I skipped this.

2. Use a good PCIe FireWire card

I had good results with Texas Instruments chipsets. The ones I would look for are:

TSB43AB23 · TSB43AB22 · TSB82AA2 · XIO2213B · XIO2213BZAY

On Windows, some cameras/cards need the legacy 1394 driver (.msi).

3. WinDV was the best capture tool for me

Simple, boring, worked well. I had bad experiences with Scenalyzer: it buffered frames weirdly and produced missing/hanging frames at the beginning without me noticing. Even worse, it did not mark those missing frames as DV errors. That is really bad, because DV normally contains error information that repair tools can actually use.

4. DVRescue is useful, but understand the A/B trap

DVRescue A/B repair is not "combine both files into the longest best file." File A is the reference timeline. File B is only a donor for better frames inside A's timeline.

So if A is 10 minutes long, and B contains the same footage plus 50 extra seconds at the end, the DVRescue result is still 10 minutes. The extra 50 seconds from B are just gone. DVRescue can repair A, but it will not elongate A.

That is why I built stitching tools. If one capture has the beginning/middle and another has the middle/end, you need stitching, not only DVRescue.

5. Double capture important tapes

If a tape matters, capture it twice. Sometimes one capture has broken frames exactly where the other one is clean. My tools are built around this idea: compare the captures, cluster the matching footage, stitch where needed, and only use DVRescue where it actually improves things.

6. Deinterlacing matters way more than I expected

I did 504 blind comparisons of different deinterlacers and settings. For my footage, the best result was QTGMC in VapourSynth, Slower preset, default settings. It gave the best mix of clean deinterlacing, a tiny bit of sharpening, and not flattening the original tape noise too much.

My top five were:

1. QTGMC via havsfunc in VapourSynth — Preset="Slower"
2. QTGMC via havsfunc in VapourSynth — Preset="Very Slow"
3. QTempGaussMC via vs-jetpack / vsdeinterlace — refined source match + post-smooth lossless mode, sharpening 0.1
4. QTempGaussMC via vs-jetpack / vsdeinterlace — default settings
5. Disney Deep Deinterlacing via vs_deepdeinterlace

The "Very Slow" QTGMC preset was also good, but for my videos it looked a bit more processed / noise-flattened. So I ended up preferring QTGMC Slower default for the final access copies.

7. Metadata is not optional

If you want Apple Photos, Google Photos, QuickTime, etc. to sort the files correctly, you need proper recording-date metadata. WinDV captured clean files for me, but the metadata needed fixing. My final MP4 script writes the date/title/camera metadata so the finished files behave like chronological videos.

8. Keep the raw DV/AVI files

The MP4s are watchable access copies. They are not the preservation master. Keep the original DV captures somewhere safe.

That's the short version of the rabbit hole I went through. Hopefully this saves someone else a few weekends of testing, confusion.

does anyone know what cables i need to solder for my camera? ive been searching for mini dvr tutorials and theres so much cable options that i dont know which cable is the right one for my camera, plz help

I just got this camcorder and shot a bit of footage to test it, but the tape is empty according to my pc. I couldn't find anyone else with this problem and I don't know a lot about tech myself. So here's a description of what happens. If you need more details or pictures, please ask. I really want to use this camera and edit the footage on my pc.

First of all, the camcorder does connect to my pc. It's connected via a docking station and USB -port (picture 1). I press 'PictBridge PRINT' on the camcorder to connect with the tape (picture 2). Then theres a screen with a frame of the video that's on the tape. I can't press the two buttons on the right and the ones on the left bring me to a blue screen (picture 3). After that it says to check the connected device, my pc I assume (picture 4).

My pc makes a sound when it's connected and it shows up with the connected devices. I took screenshots of what it says. It says there is nothing on the device, but I can see the video I took on the camcorder itself. (The pictures on the memory stick do show up on my pc, everything works just fine there. So I don't understand what the problem is.)

Here's translations of the Dutch words:
picture 5: eigenschappen = properties
picture 6: verwisselbare opslag = interchangeable/convertable storage, text on the right = select 1 file to get more information and share cloud content
picture 7: this map is empty
picture 8: there were no new photos or videos found on this device

Hello, i just bought my handy cam last week, it was a 2006 model, Sony DCR-HC35 handy cam.

I cannot find a compatible mini DV cassette tape or memory stick for this one. Also, i cannot find where is the memory stick slot on my cam.

I’m being desperate, i want to use it on my vacation this July, but i cannot seem to find any tutorial video online, Youtube, TikTok.

Please help me. Thank you!

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