Is Digital8 DV passthrough better than MiniDV DV passthrough?
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- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
- In this video, I’ll compare using a Digital8 camcorder as a passthrough, versus using a MiniDV camcorder as a passthrough:
Hi8 -- Digital8 -- Firewire card
Hi8 -- MiniDV -- Firewire card
Then as a bonus, I compare:
Hi8 -- Digital8 -- Firewire card
Hi8 -- ATI AIW 9600XT
Conclusions
If you digitize your analog tapes with the DV method, then I think a MiniDV camcorder or a Hi8 produce pretty much identical results. See the video for a side-by-side comparison.
If you have the choice of getting a Digital8 camcorder or a Hi8 camcorder, get the Digital8 camcorder. It can play Hi8 tapes just as well as a Hi8 camcorder. And, of course, it can play Digital8 recordings as well.
Finally, in the comparison of the DV transfer method with the SD capture method, I prefer the SD capture method. Watch the video to understand how I came to that conclusion.
Devices used in this comparison videos:
Sony TRV-66 Hi8 camcorder
Sony TRV-330 Digital8 camcorder
Sony TRV-17 MiniDV camcorder
ATI All-In-Wonder 9600XT
All video captured/transferred was converted to 1080x720 at 59.94fps in Hybrid QTGMC for deinterlacing and Bicubic for upscaling. The SD captures were converted to 982x720, which is why they look a bit wider than the firewire transfers.
Never thought of going from a camcorder to another for pass through. Very interesting. Now I gotta try it myself! Thanks for research and ideas.
One more idea for a comparison - Probably the most important one of all - I have read a few places that D8 camcorders convert Video8/Hi8 to DV before re-converting to S-Video and composite out. This is a form of generation loss essentially with an A->D then D->A conversion that doesn't need to be there. If that is the case, you'll see detail loss and the same color abnormalities in the S-Video output from the Digital8 camcorder as compared to the Hi8 camcorder when both S-Video signals are sent to the AIW9600XT. Would be very grateful if you could post that comparison using the same tape you used for these comparisons, I think that would shed a lot of light on that topic.. If true, then you'd ideally want to capture all Video8 and Hi8 from a Hi8 camcorder over S-Video and and not use Digital8 except for with Digital8 tapes if you're going for the highest quality.
Thank you for the comparison! Will option 2 (source - DV - firewire) result in a better outcome in terms of picture quality compare to option 3 (analog with SVHS output- analog/HDMI - hdmi/usb)? These two options may be more available than option 1 and wanted to get your opinion. Thanks again.
DV passthrough produces a very nice video file and is good enough for most situation. The MiniDV camcorders in passthrough mode will stabilize jittery video and look good. The only drawback is that it uses a compressed video format and a compressed color (4:1:1) that some experts poo poo. If you go the SD capture route there are a lot of crappy devices and many are windows only. Some are overpriced like the medium Elgato. The GV USB2 is well respected by people I respect. Some ATI devices (ATI 600) are still sworn by by experts. I’ve come to the view that there are several ways to achieve acceptable results. Depends on what used devices are available locally at a good price.
Color accuracy I think comes down to the specific analog to digital converter chips involved - in this case, it's the Sony DV encoder chip vs the theater 200 chip in the ATI. You really can't say that DV encoders in general have worse at color accuracy from this test. You could say that most Sony chips are probably less accurate than the Theater 200. A more interesting test would be the Canopus ADVC-110 vs one of the Sony chips and see if they produce different colors or not.
If you were looking at what device has the best color accuracy, a better test would have been to feed the different converters live color bars from an NTSC test pattern generator and see what the vectorscope looks like of the captured video files. You could also record the color bars to tape, and play it back and do the same test, but then you are more testing how faithfully a specific camcorder records those levels and reproduces them rather than the color accuracy of the conversion chips. Using known color bar inputs and vectorscope outputs takes the subjectivity away from guessing which "looks" more accurate. Sure, I tend to agree that tide containers are more orange, but it could be that the color actually stored on the tape that is being played back is more "traffic cone". It's quite common to see certain colors hit their targets and others not when looking at a vectorscope information on a raw tape playback in my experience.
As for the detail loss piece, looks like the AGC (automatic gain control) on those Sony chips isn't as good as what is on the Theater 200. My understanding is that if a ADC (analog to digital converter) gets a 110IRE luma level input that it is supposed to scale down the entirety of the luma values by about 10% so that the max bright becomes 100IRE and the rest of the visible values also dim by that same percentage and this should be done before assigning a digital value to each "pixel" so that nothing is clipped. It would appear that the rest of the image in the AIW capture is slightly dimmer as predicted. Without a waveform monitor or histogram, it's hard to say that it didn't also clip, but looks to at least have done so to a lesser degree.
This is what makes macrovision work by the way in devices that don't refuse to record it altogether - the AGC sees the super bright whites in the upper vertical blanking area as very bright and then it dims the rest of the picture to make that the brightest white level possible, even though that's completely off of the viewable screen.
I really would like to see your take on VHS_Decode and a start to finish hardware and software setup from a fresh install and get your opinion on if it is worth the hassle from your perspective. I have tried it personally, but getting all of the variables correct was more than a little frustrating, and the result for me didn't seem to be night and day better than a traditional capture route to justify all of that with the short samples I did. Theoretically, VHS_Decode should do better with line dropouts than just about any other method. Most VCRs like to mask line dropouts with a sort of faded purple horizontal line instead which is probably better than static, but still kind of distracting.
Thanks for this detailed reply. Super useful for everyone to learn from. A lot here. Regarding VHS Decode project, I am interested in trying it out eventually but I think it is deep deep rabbit hole and from the forum posts I have read it requires a lot of patience. I guess the same could be said of the SD capture method and trying to figure out VapourSyth but I’m now used this rabbit hole somewhat 🤪
@@videocaptureguide I tend to agree with Orihalcon. Using color bars would work but you should also invest in the ADVC 110 and the UltraStudio Monitor 3G (Intensity Shuttle).
Hi my question are: I would like to digitize vhs tapes ( on a super vhs tape player with tbc ) and for the best result is by S video or Scart ? Thanks
Someone asked this question in 2013 at DigitalFAQ and NJRoadfan replued: "Use S-Video. The SCART port on SVHS decks only carries audio and composite video."
Source: www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-restore/5601-capturing-vcr-video.html#post29553
Good luck on your digitization project!
I have a sony handycam ccd-trv87 hi8 and a VCR. If I connect the VCR to the
Sony handycam which has a TBC on it will it correct the line on the VHS cassette coming from the VCR?
The Sony Hi8 camcorder only has one set of audio video ports. So if you connect you vcr to the Hi8 camcorder, you will see the feed on the Hi8 screen but there is not another set of ports to passthrough the signal to a capture card. So the Hi8 camcorder cannot be used in the passthrough way you are hoping for. The most you could do is make a copy of the VCR tape onto the Hi8 tape. And then later play back the Hi8 tape to the capture card. It may fix wavy issues, but it introduces generational loss in video tape quality. So not a good trade off.
Is it possible to go from a S-VHS deck to one of these camcorders and then connect to the PC Firewire card?
I tried this with my equipment, but both of my camcorders (one is Hi-8 and the other is mini-DV) do not appear to accept a S-VHS input signal. What am I doing wrong?
Yes, you can connect an SVideo cable from SVHS VCR to a MiniDV camcorder, and then output the signal in passthrough mode to your DV out (firewire out). That said, my MiniDV camcorder (Sony TRV-17, circa 2001) has an SVideo input. I assume (?) that all other MiniDV camcorders have such an input, too. Which model do you have?
Also, note that one must change a setting in the menu to turn on DV out. If one doesn't set it correctly, then no DV signal will be sent to the DV port out.
Re Hi8 camcorders, these do not have a DV out (firewire out) so you cannot accomplish DV passthrough as it doesn't have this feature.
Some flaws in transfer methods stand out more on bad VHS tapes than real good sources.
You missed to do the comparison using the Digital 8 camera connected with s-video to a capture device without using firewire and see the difference to the Hi8 cam connected with s-video to the capture device.
Do you want to see:
Digital8-recorded footage transferred via svideo to ATI versus Hi8-recorded footage transferred via svideo to ATI?
@@videocaptureguide Hi8 tape played back in a digital 8 camera transferred via s-video to ATI versus Hi8 tape played back in a Hi8 analog cam transferred via s-video to ATI.
Not all Digital8 camcorders will play analog Video8 and HI8 tapes. In fact many don’t.
Good point.
Digital8 camcorders with NO Video8/Hi8 playback capabilities
DCR-TRV130
DCR-TRV140
DCR-TRV145
DCR-TRV147
DCR-TRV245
DCR-TRV250
DCR-TRV255
DCR-TRV260
DCR-TRV265
DCR-TRV270
DCR-TRV280
DCR-TRV285
DCR-TRV380
Digital8 camcorders with basic Video8/Hi8 playback capabilities
DCR-TRV103
DCR-TRV110
DCR-TRV203
DCR-TRV210
DCR-TRV310
DCR-TRV315
Digital8 camcorders with Video8/Hi8 playback, supporting TBC and DNR
DCR-TRV120
DCR-TRV125
DCR-TRV230
DCR-TRV235
DCR-TRV240
DCR-TRV320
DCR-TRV325
DCR-TRV330
DCR-TRV340
DCR-TRV345
DCR-TRV350
DCR-TRV351
DCR-TRV355
DCR-TRV356
DCR-TRV430
DCR-TRV480
DCR-TRV520
DCR-TRV525
DCR-TRV530
DCR-TRV720
DCR-TRV730
DCR-TRV740
DCR-TRV820
DCR-TRV828
DCR-TRV830
DCR-TRV840