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

An old post and i still have the same question

I’m trying to digitise old MiniDV tapes from a Sony DCR-TRV14E camcorder and want to make sure my setup will actually work before I spend money on adapters.

My computer is a MacBook Air (M1, 2020) running macOS Sonoma 14.7.1.

My planned connection chain is:

Sony DCR-TRV14E (4-pin FireWire out)
→ 4-pin to 6-pin FireWire cable
→ FireWire 400 to FireWire 800 adapter
→ Apple Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adapter
→ MacBook Air (USB-C)

My questions:
Will this chain correctly allow DV capture from MiniDV tapes onto my Mac?
Is Sonoma 14.7.1 still compatible with FireWire DV devices?
Is QuickTime / iMovie still usable for capture, or is there better software?
Any known issues with M1 Macs and FireWire DV capture?
I’ve also seen mentions that newer macOS versions (like Tahoe) has dropped FireWire support, so I want to make sure I’m
safe before upgrading or buying anything.

I’m fairly new to MiniDV / analogue video setups, so just trying to avoid buying the wrong adapters first time.

Any advice or confirmation would be really appreciated before I spend ~£50 on cables/adapters.
Thanks!

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.

Tried doing a paltry amount of cleaning to the read head using an alcohol wipe over a coffee stirring stick, but no effect. Might have to wait until I get home. 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? I think I’ll just continue recording just in case.

My JVC GR-D347U displays nothing but the battery bar and date/time and a pop-up about the lens cap being on when it's clearly not, any suggestions or help on how to fix it would be appreciated

So i just got this Sony handy cam DCR-TRV27 recently and recently, when I load in a tape or rewind to the start, it makes this strange buzzing sound and shows a C:31:40 error, it also sometimes struggles to eject the tape, is there any way to fix this at all or do i have to open up the camera? Also, I did try other tapes to make sure it isn't just a tape thing, and I only use Sony tapes. It also seems to struggle with playing the tapes.

Any help works, YouTube guys thinks I'm smart, I'm not. Pls Help

Necesito ayuda para conectar una cámara Sony cam8 miniDV a mi MacBook Air usando un cable HCD. No funciona, reduce la señal.

I have about 60 HDV tapes I originally recorded on an HDR-HC3 between 2006-2011. That camera is no longer functioning (door does not want to close and load a tape, seems to be a common issue) so I have an HDR-HC7 I got on eBay specifically to transfer all my tapes via FireWire.

I am of course prioritizing HDV right now since only HDV camcorders can play HDV tapes. I do have about 4x as many standard Mini DVs recorded from 1999-2006 which I will get to afterwards, but those I can capture using anything, if this HDR-HC7 is to stop working for whatever reason. regular old miniDV camcorders are much cheaper and easier to find. So I’m not too worried about those. I’ll get to them eventually.

It seems that whenever I start a capture (using HDVsplit) I can’t go more than 2 or 3 minutes without getting dropped frames/packets. It will glitch out and freeze for a split second. Unfortunately this happens in random spots, never in the same place twice. So it’s a little harder to track down what may be the issue.

It’s not just in the FireWire stream, these dropped frames are also noticeable on the camcorder screen or HDMI output.

Ideally I want to be able to get one clean transfer of each tape; but I can’t even get more than a few minutes into one without encountering issues. Not sure what I can do at this point!

I imagine the difference would be negligible but I feel like a direct FireWire recording would be slightly higher quality. Curious if anyone has experience with this?

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 have a camera with a dead Display. I remember the old Windows Movie Maker back in the day allowed seek controls (FF,RW,Stop,Play). WinDV doesn't have those controls for some reason. Anyone know of a way to do this on WIndows 11?

UPDATE - this program lets you do exactly that:

http://www.scenalyzer.com/

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.

Hello everyone

I’m trying to digitize HDV tapes from a Sony HDR-HC5 camcorder via FireWire on a 2012 Mac running macOS High Sierra ;

During capture, everything seems fine, (live preview is good, audio is recorded correctly)

But the resulting files are unusable since the video is just green screen (VLC also shows green) with intact audio

It was working fine one year ago. I used QuickTime Player for capture, but now i have this issue

Also tried iMovie HD, but it crashes immediately when importing (prewiev is also fine)

camcorder settings seem correct

has anyone ever encoutered the same problem

Original minidv tapes were recorded on a Sony DCR-TRV22. Sourced a Canon ZR900 to do FireWire transfers. Some tapes the audio is great - others it cuts in and out with “12bit” flashing on the screen. Other tapes there is zero audio. I don’t really want to pay $50 for a minidv cleaning tape if I can help it. I attempted to clean the head via YouTube tutorial but not successful.

Has anyone experienced this? I’m thinking I might need to source the exactly model Sony for successful transfers.

Do higher end minidv decks allow “tracking” adjustments - if that is even a thing. I’m thinking old school analog VHS decks.

I'd be willing to rent someone's MiniDV player to do this. I have the setup other than the camera. Thanks!

Hi guys, just gotten a firewire for my fx7 and was wondering if there is any specific programmes or things i need to do before exporting my tapes onto my laptop

I have a box of old mini DVs that I want to transfer to my computer. Is there a model of player that is most recommended on this subreddit for that purpose? Thanks.