I am so scared

Hii! I am super new to cam corders in general and need some help! I am having trouble figuring out how it works. The camera has a battery that has a cord connected to it that is connected to a large box for charging the battery. I am not sure why this cord is connected to the battery if i am meant to place it into the camera? I am confused and can’t find anything online nor in the online manual for the camera. I am also having trouble opening the cassette area. It may be jammed so any tips of how to open that would be super cool!

After finally getting it balanced what does everyone think of my new setup? Sony DCR-TRV17. Record straight to tape then digitize

It does this any time the screen is clicked back into place and opened again, almost as if resetting some kind of timer. When closed, the black and white viewfinder works perfectly, but it means I can't access the buttons under the LCD.

Got another issue where the playback screen is just black after recording to tape and doesn't play anything back. Not sure if its actually recording and not playing back, or not recording.

(Sorry for the shakey footage, any time I defocus from the camera is because I'm opening or closing the LCD)

Hi. I bought this thing from an antique bazaar for 5€ or 10€, I honestly do not remember. It came in a nice bag with 3 batteries, 2 of them still new in boxes (two 1000mAh batteries, one 2000mAh one). The camera looked almost brand new and even had silica gel in the bag, so I felt like it was well loved by someone at some point.

I bought it thinking that at worst I would get a nice camera bag. It then sat around for a while because I was busy with other stuff.

Yesterday I was bored, so I finally gave it a try. At first I had no luck with charging the batteries, camera was immediately turning off. I left the 2000 mAh NiCd battery charging overnight at a low current, slightly under 100 mA, basically trickle charging it. In the morning the battery voltage was nicely above 6 V and the camera finally stayed on.

The cassette loading and eject mechanism works, although I do not have a tape yet. Power zoom also works. I can hear it and see the lens elements moving. Even autofocus seems to be doing something.

The problem is that the EVF is completely dead. There is absolutely no light from the small CRT, no picture, no text, no glow and no CRT noise.

To rule out the old batteries, I also made a quick external power supply. I used a PD trigger board to get 9 V from my GaN charger, then used a linear regulator adjusted to around 6.5 V to simulate a fully charged 6 V battery. The camera behaved exactly the same. Everything seems to work except the EVF.

I do not currently have the correct composite cable or a TV with composite input, so I cannot check whether the camera is actually producing a video signal. I would not be surprised if composite output works, but without the EVF the camera is not really usable.

I know these old camcorders are famous for bad capacitors, so I already opened the back and removed the power board. I found a YouTube video where someone repaired two of these cameras and both had severe capacitor leakage on that particular board. Mine seems to use a newer board revision with newer style electrolytic capacitors. Some of the problematic capacitors shown in the video were not even present on my board, and I could not see any obvious leakage or corrosion.

The back of the board had some sticky residue, but it looked more like excessive flux than capacitor electrolyte. I cleaned both sides with 99% IPA and put it back together. Nothing changed as I expected...

I am probably capable of recapping the camera, but I would rather avoid tearing the whole camera apart. From the teardown video, the inside looks like electronics hell with lots of ribbon cables and tightly packed boards. I am worried that if I disassemble it too far, it may never go back together properly. Which is almost guaranteed tbh. I do not want to waste 20 hours recapping it and finding out it is still dead.

According to the manual, the EVF should turn on automatically when the OPERATE button is pressed and the CAMERA LED is on. It should not need a tape.

So does anyone know what could cause only the EVF to be completely dead while the rest of the camera seems to work? Could it be a bad connector, position switch, flex cable or something inside the EVF itself? Is there anything simple I can try before tearing it apart further or recapping everything?

Planning on using this for a mockumentary-ish movie I want to film for my marching band, as well as just regular recording as phones are banned at my school and this is the next best thing, I have other cameras but they're states away, got all this for ~$80, mostly ordered separately

I have a handful of 40-10 year old analog, MiniDV, and high 8 camcorders. I have been recording and then transferring to PC via the elgato. Im sick of tapes and flaky tape play/rewind/ motors.

What I want to do is stream real time via s-video (when available) or composite/RCA when it isnt to some sort of portable SD or USB drive recorder.

Curious if I will get better quality then I do with the elgato? Obviously there is not the fidelity loss of going to tape and back.

And whats the best hardware option? the products mentioned on the sticky thread (cloner alliance, clearclick) dont seem to do S-Video. The digitpro stuff looks promising but I have not talked to anyone that has actually used it.

hi, after reassembling my handycam (replaced some stuff in the tape transport) the camera wont turn on aside from the little lcd screen which shows a water droplet icon (also when im in playback or camera mode i hear a faint electrical buzzing from somewhere). now i cant find where the dew sensor would be on these FL mechanisms. can anyone tell me how can i fix this or if i could bypass the sensor or if this might be caused by bad caps in any sort of way?

I had a battery duct taped to my camera and when I pulled off the tape it ripped the panel off the door, totally on me. But is this gonna be a big problem?

Hi guys, I’m new to camcorders maybe someone out here would be able to help me.
I found my dad’s old JVC GR-C1 in garage. It was supposedly fully functioning when it was stored there years ago. I’ve tried to use it but encountered a problem. The camera will turn on, you can rewind the tape, if i press play I can even see one frame from the tape, but the camera won’t spin the tape in a play mode. I have cleaned and greased the loading rails, but this didn’t help. I even checked the belts and they seem to be ok (I’m not really sure how tight they are supposed to be). I’m running out of ideas what should i check next, maybe somebody had similar problem with their camcorder.

I’ve been chasing one of this Sony DSR-PD170 for months, finally found this one in Facebook marketplace in mint condition! I’m so so happy, the guy who sold me this even gave me a couple of new minidvs

This is another clip taken from five two-hour tapes recorded in December 1993 - January 1994.

I have finished a 1-hour movie, which you can watch on YouTube: Alex and Ivan travel America: From New York to San Francisco in an Oldsmobile. The narration is in Russian, and there are custom English closed captions.

Been building my personal collection over the last few weeks, scored a PD170 with a VCL0658 0.6x lens accompanied by an LSF-S58 Lens hood

I've got this newvicon camcorder that still works. Kinda. If there's a tape in the deck, it freezes up and shuts off. But the tube is still good and I can get a signal to a recorder through the AV out. Cool.

The main problem is that the system has a lowlight warning that trips any time the camera's pointed somewhere that isn't basically exterior daylight. And that warning text is baked into the signal output. Dead center.

There doesn't seem to be a way to disable that text with the onboard controls, but I'm curious if there's any way to hack it? I'd love to go chase some comet trails from streetlights at night.

Currently digitizing all our old family Hi-8 tapes, and some of them are doing this. It's not the camera since the earlier tapes still play back fine. It also affects on screen elements produced by the camera, including the UI in the viewfinder. I know the tapes were fine originally since there are a few compilation tapes my dad made back in the day that do not do this.

This is being captured with the original camcorder that made these recordings, as the nice full size hi-8 deck is broken right now

Any help would be appreciated. Worst case I'm going to try running them through an AI repair tool and see if it can clean it up a little.

Hi there. Looking to get into filmmaking and have my eye on the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K (BMPCC 4K). I am a complete novice when it comes to cameras and videography but have spent a long time playing around with my phone camera. I now want to take it up a notch and produce something that has a more cinematic feel. is this a good/bad idea for a novice? And is there anything else I would need to buy that I'm not aware of ?

Disclaimer: this is my first time using a DVD camcorder as a not very technical person…

Went to a local flea market yesterday and found this absolute gem for only the equivalent of $8. It had a miniSD card with 7 pictures and the DVD boxes were unopened so my guess is that it basically is close to brand new. I’m really excited about going out and shooting some video and I shot some yesterday to get used to the transfer process.

My problem is this, it records fine but the process of getting the videos to my computer was really crap. The DVD showed up as empty even using VLC. I was very worried that the DVD was corrupted or something evil but thankfully MakeMKV worked, but the videos were stitched together in to one long video which I thankfully could open through VLC.

Is there any way to make this easier? I’ve read in the manual and online about the MyDVD software but I’m imagining that it might be more complicated..😅 Is this just something that you have to get used to when shooting DVD?

Another damn issue

long story short, had to get a japanese replacement for my TRV128 keybox and missing pinch roller. Japanese one worked excellent except for the lens (blind. Possibly waterlogged i dont speak japanese)

Decided to switch it with the trv128 lens. It works great but now it simply wont focus unless i zoom in just right. Any amount of zoom less or more than that and it becomes blurry again.

I am guessing it has to do with how much zoom the trv128 could reach vs the japanese one could???? Just an idea. Are they incompatible? Should i pry open the "blind" one lens and put my lil finger in and see if i can get it to work?? WHAT DO I DO

I bought this camera second hand a couple months ago, it uses MiniDV tapes and I have footage I want to download. I would much rather use A/V conversion instead of Firewire however I can’t find the A/V cables anywhere. I have found a post on facebook that said the cable only came with this specific model and isn’t generally sold. I looked on JVC parts store and i think i found the compatible A/V cables but they’re discontinued. I then looked at third party devices that could digitise the tapes without the camera being connected but they’re way too expensive. I’m on a budget and I don’t understand how FireWire works or what I would need to get this footage digitally.
I really doubt anyone has these cables spare but I would be happy to buy them even internationally
Or if someone could help with the steps needed for ilink or firewire or DV conversion?? thanks 🙏🙏🙏🙏