hey guys welcome back to Pauls hardware
today's video isn't going to be about
testing graphics cards or building a
computer but I think you'll still find
it interesting because I have some new
equipment here that I'm going to be
integrating into my home studio got this
fancy new digital camcorder that records
unto DV tapes and of course captures via
firewire so to clarify for anyone who
might be confused today's video is about
archiving my old footage from all of
these old DV tapes so no none of this
stuff is new in fact a lot of it is very
old and one of the issues I had when
attempting to get my old footage off of
these these tapes by the way or from
some projects I did back in college as
well some work with the church that I
used to attend to even playback these
tapes though I needed a camera that
could play DV tapes these tapes did it
record digitally and still do they're
still functional and actually you can
still buy these tapes that are out there
although they're less practical now for
one they record onto tape so that means
that they do have a finite lifespan also
for those kids out there who have never
dealt with something like this it's got
a spool up onto these tool pieces on
either side so that means there's moving
parts that means the tapes themselves
can fail over time the tape itself can
wear out over time especially if it's
exposed to light the cameras themselves
did tend to launch at a time when you
could get cool stuff like a flip-outs
LCD screen which was pretty unique at
the time LCDs were still very expensive
and just coming out but more importantly
the DV tapes themselves have this cool
loading function pops out like that it
kind of reminds me of like Robocop when
you put this gun away a little bit but
these can wear out over time as well so
eventually if you have an old DV camera
it's going to die now when I originally
recorded most of this footage I wasn't
using this camera here I was using a
nicer camera so if you guys will bear
with me as I reminisce and maybe get a
little nostalgic about some of the
earlier video projects I made they were
recorded on TV many of them are saved on
these tapes I'm going to attempt to load
the tapes into this camera capture them
via firewire onto this system using
modern-day Windows 10 as well as Adobe
Premiere but how did I actually record
these videos a lot of them are recorded
on the Canon GL one which is a mini DVD
camcorder which apparently you can still
buy on Amazon somehow which is kind of
insane look you can get it used on
Amazon for like 175 to 250 dollars but
this camera was absolutely drool-worthy
at the time for a sort of a prosumer
crossover camera and had fancy features
like 20x zoom and 3c CDs that was the
big selling point at the time when it
came to capturing digital video you had
some cameras that used a single CCD for
all colors the go1 had 3c CDs one for
red one for blue one for green to give
better color reproduction among other
things but still recorded using just
standard ntsc I believe 525 line format
so not necessarily super-high resolution
or anything like that and I just thought
it was interesting scrolling through
some of these older specs like the three
CCD specs 270,000 pixels per CCD 250,000
effective it gives you specs like how
long standard play DV tapes will record
480 minutes or you can do long play
which is a hundred twenty minutes but
then you get less detail but I think one
of the big features of this camera at
the time and I believe it used to retail
for about 1400 ish maybe $1,800
as a lens f one point six to two point
nine which is pretty nice along with
that zoom four point two to 84
millimeters look you can also get it on
eBay for 250 bucks just like today where
a nicer camera and a nicer lens is gonna
get you better image quality this nicer
gl1 camera got me a better image quality
on these old DV tapes I made this camera
that I got to hopefully capture them is
not nearly as nice though I think I got
this for about 40 bucks on eBay
a while back when I first started
getting the idea that I wanted to do
this project and back up these tapes it
is a samsung s CD 27 and it comes with
fancy features like a memory stick look
at that that's 128 megabytes memory
stick as well as of course firewire
connectivity which was very popular in
the time because firewire is much faster
than the original USB one I was hoping
it might have a USB output it did not so
what I now need is a computer to capture
from this camcorder that has firewire
and I don't really have that just kind
of sitting around my first idea was to
try to repurpose this old card which is
actually the card that I used to capture
firewire with which is a creative labs
soundblaster Audigy sound car
which is a really good sound card for
the time and actually does have a
FireWire port integrated into it however
it is pci so i would need a computer
that has a pci slot so i kind of need to
go get a slightly older build and put
that together in order to make use of
this card so as kind of a shortcuts I
went on Amazon and I found this from the
Amazon warehouse deals a two port one
three nine four B firewire add-on card
which is PCI Express and also according
to the feedback on the Amazon product
page should work with Windows 10 with
default drivers so that was another
thing that I was somewhat concerned
about I do believe this is used because
it's an Amazon warehouse product that
has stickers on it and everything
it is a cybo product and pretty
straightforward it's a low profile card
they give you a longer bracket in here
apparently had a disc that shipped with
it at some point but who cares about
that but here's the card itself nice and
small compact so I am going to first
hunt down a firewire cable and then I'm
gonna plug this into my capture system
over here and see if I can fire it up
and get it working so got the card
installed fortunately in PCI Express
expansion card installation it's pretty
simple now I've got my firewire cord
over here and I need to decide which of
these tapes I'm going to start out with
I have one tape here that just has a
line on it and that means that I striped
the tape this is something that you guys
don't have to worry about these days if
you're recording on SD cards it lays
down a timecode across the entire tape
which means if you're capturing it on a
device won't like a computer most likely
that you can tell it in and out points
and this was an older method of
capturing where you could scrub through
the entire tape tell it all the in and
out points to capture and then say
capture and then the system would rewind
back to that and capture just those in
and out points that you suggested if you
don't lay down a timecode for the entire
tape first then when you stop it might
jump forward a frame or two and then
restart the timecode back at zero so
that's why you stripe the tape
fortunately we don't have to do that
anymore that's one of the benefits of
the full digital recording that we have
now in SD cards there might be something
on this but I think I might have just
stripped it and then put the line on it
which is what I indicated there this
tape just says Vegas that one should be
interesting and then finally I've got
four more DV tapes here that are all
from my cinema classes that I took back
when I was attending USC I got
of my own volition by the way had a
scholarship even briefly to I was a bad
college student I'm getting off on a
tangent here point is I'm very
interested to see what's on these but
first off was that card I just installed
even recognize let's go over here the
device manager here and we can see there
it is I Triple E 139 for host controller
apparently Texas Instruments makes the
actual one there so from there we can
pull up premiere and I'm going to be
doing trial and error here because it's
been a while since I actually tried to
capture from tape with premiere although
it should have those functions built-in
somehow capture oh there it is capture
device offline at this point I want to
get this camera going hit play it
reflects play here on the capture
function in Premiere and here's where I
was mentioning if you have a long DV
tape with a bunch of footage on it and
it was 10 or 15 years ago you could play
the entire tape back and then you could
set a bunch of in and out points here
and you can actually name all of those
clips as well then you tell it to
capture in/out or capture tape and then
it would go back and capture the whole
thing but again it can only do that if
it has timecode that is down which
apparently this tape does not have
whenever I make a video about something
like this a project that I really not
sure how it's gonna go I always think to
myself like what if everything goes
wrong not that everything is going wrong
right now but we are encountering some
dilemmas several of the tapes have tried
so far have not been playing back
properly in this DV camera there's a
couple possible reasons why that might
be one might be that the readhead itself
has gotten smudged up so I'm gonna try
to clean that right now I've removed
this piece just to give myself a little
bit more access to it thanks to my
iFixit kit there I was having some
difficulty getting playback on some of
these DV tapes over here the Vegas one
in particular I know there's footage
there but it was having weird banding
issues going across and nothing seemed
to be playing back at the right speed
there's a SP standard play in LP which
is long play that you can record with DV
tapes and I don't think this camera is
properly identifying which mode they
were recorded in so when it's playing it
back it's very slow and the audio is
kind of messed up I have discovered
there's a project on this tape that is
playing back properly on this camera so
if I can get that to reappear here again
with the image and everything on
premiere which was working just fine at
least for one of them the playback on
the camera was all janky but it was at
least
appearing over here with the audio and
everything if I can get that and I think
that's one project I can at least pull
over for now and that would at least
give me the feeling like I haven't
wasted my time today but anyway but I'm
not going to attempt to use this q-tip
to clean off the reed head in there I
don't have a whole lot of confidence for
one q-tips aren't the best tool for this
since it can scratch that Reed sensor
but this came with the camera cleaning
kit so I'm hoping it'll be all right and
I don't seem to have any coffee filters
anymore so here goes I'm just kind of
gently brushing across the top of it I
don't have any alcohol or anything going
on right now
it doesn't seem that dirty to me either
so I have no idea if this is gonna help
so I've skipped forward a little bit
guys
because trial and error when you're
trying to figure out something like this
isn't all that interesting to watch I
just wanted to show how I've actually
gotten some level of functionality out
of this so right now we are capturing on
this computer however for some reason
and it's probably just because it's an
old camcorder or something like that
it's not actually playing back on here
so that was one thing that took a while
to figure out why is it actually showing
up here finally I just hit record and
let it play and I was like oh it
actually is capturing the video not
capturing the audio however so I heard
recapture audio I've concocted this sort
of intermediary got an AV cable here
which this has an AV out which just goes
over to a composite video out as well as
RCA left and right out you've used those
with an adapter to go into my soundboard
so basically I did one pass through this
capturing with Adobe Premiere and then I
did another pass with it just outputting
the audio and capturing that directly
via my soundboard then I can take both
of those and sync them in Premiere and
end up with hopefully a finished video
that's is more or less what I actually
originally recorded on the DV tape now
obviously this is not an ideal solution
and if I had a bunch of DV tapes to back
up it's not something I would want to go
through with but fortunately there were
actually only a couple things that I
really wanted to get off of these DV
tapes there's some other stuff too that
I might still try to dive into but there
were two projects that I did towards the
end of my time as a film students and I
really wanted to get them off of here
just to watch them again 18 or so years
later as well as to just have for my own
backup purposes and I also wanted to
share them with some of my friends who
were who were actors quote-unquote in
these videos themselves now
unfortunately I can't share these videos
with you guys directly or at least I
can't post them here because they use a
lot of copyrighted content when it comes
to mu
you can audio but what I will do is
after I have synced them up back here
and rendered them back out I'll upload
them as unlisted videos and I'll put
links to those down in this video's
description so guys please be nice and
remember that these are student film
videos that I made 18 plus years ago and
I'll put links to those down in this
video's description if you want to check
them out and let me know in the comments
what you think of them as well as my
friends acting abilities which I'm sure
have greatly improved since then as well
but the way I was capturing the audio
just to clarify here was piping it to
the sound board and then using OBS to
capture that using premiere to capture
the video and it looks like I've at
least ended up being able to splice
together a couple video projects that I
was looking forward to recapturing off
of here just to have for my own archives
as well as to share with my old friends
because I'll be sending them links to
these as well
the video quality in case you guys are
wondering is 720 by 480 when it comes to
resolution the bitrate at least that it
was captured at his 30 megabit which
seems a little high that's probably
smore to do with what premiere was
encoding it at vs. what it was actually
captured on the DV tape 30 frames per
second though and then I think to follow
up with my the rest of my stack of DV
tapes here what can I do with these I
think the answer that I've come up with
and doing some research about the
different cameras is that not all DV
cameras especially old camcorders that
you might be trying to repurpose as a DV
deck are gonna operate just the same
there's variances between the different
brands and then there's also the
possibility that it was originally
recorded in standard play or long play
and there's even extended play as well
which I don't think I messed with but is
also something that could potentially
throw a wrench in there so I think what
I'm gonna have to do for the rest of
these if I still want to capture and
archive them is maybe get a different
camera I might look into getting an
actual Canon camera cuz I think that's
what these are originally recorded with
but I'm gonna have to keep an eye out
for deals on that because I think for
now I'm happy with what I've captured
thus far and hopefully you guys enjoy it
too
one final thing today's video was not
really intended to be a tutorial it was
more like hey guys I'm doing this let me
kind of take you along for the ride and
see what happens
but I do have some other old projects
that I might want to capture as well
those are on VHS VHS requires a VCR it's
analog only there are other variables
that get thrown into the mix when you're
talking about capturing footage from old
VHS tapes but I think there's a slightly
higher chance that some of you out there
might have old VHS tapes that you want
to backup digitally for
more so than those who might still have
old DV tapes so let me know what you
think of that idea in the comment
section down below and for now but
thumbs up button if you enjoyed this
video and feel free to check out my
student film videos linked down in the
description they're unlisted for now and
again please please be kind thanks again
for watching guys we'll see you next
time
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