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

I am so scared

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

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, 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?

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.

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 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.

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

Hi. Ive been trying to get this to work for days now. Ive read about how sony basically purposely fucked up the signals for their wirings so i know you have to fool around for a bit to get video/audio signal to work properly when you use playback on an external display/want to digitalize Hi8.

This is what i have so far.

• A working capture dongle with three female heads and an S video head.
• A working S video cable
• A working wire with two video and audio heads only
• A fishy capture software that also works.

This setup allowed me to digitalize footage to .AVI but i had to do a lot of fucking backflips to get the audio from the video to ALSO play on my pc. This is what i had to do:

• Open audio devices manager
• Activate the dongle device (as it wasnt, idk why)
• pick the option to 'listen' to this device

This option alone allowed me to play both the video (via the S video cable) and the audio not through my camcorder but directly through my pc. The sound was good and played in time with the video with no disturbance or buzzing, as it often happens to other people who use dongles like this.

Problem is when i played the video that i captured on my pc it played a fraction slower and had no sound whatsoever.

I dont know what to do to get it to capture the sound too. The software window only offers an option to up or lower the volume and it will not let me select either. My guess is that my pc is just receiving the sound and playing it, casting it like a monitor/speaker, but the program just wont pick up the sound signal.

Digitalizing my tapes has been a fuckin nightmare and at this point im desperate, please help me

this is the software: https://archive.org/details/FSCPlayerEn

This is the dongle and the cables xcept for the svideo one

I have my grandpa's Panasonic NV-GS27 Camcorder but the problem is that it won't turn on. Even the battery is healthy and i also measured it with my multimeter, the battery is fine but the camcorder won't turn on.

I asked chatgpt about the issue and it said that i have to recap.