MiniDV Camera and tapes

[Eidolon]

I have an old MiniDV camera (not as old as stuff usually is on here of course), and I'm having problems either with it or with the old tapes.

I haven't used it in about three years. As such I ran a fresh 'test tape' through it first, and it seemed fine. So then I put one of my old tapes in that made on this camera, and hit problems. I just can't get proper playback. I tried a few, and it's always the same, picture breakup if I get one at all.

A couple of the tapes look as if they've curved a bit, which is worrying.

A couple of my PCs have died, and i was looking for some old footage from the orginal tapes, including some of my dog who died last year. The tapes have been looked after, stored well, with silica gel capsules and a dehumdifier in the room.

I am assuming the problems seem to be more with the tapes. Every one I've tried seems to be the same. Does anyone know of any way to get them to playback properly, and what exactly is wrong? These tapes are my only copies of a lot of things, and if I can't save them somehow, then I've lost al this footage forever, right back to old VHS home movies that I backed up this way. Thanks for any help.

[peter_scott]

I think I would try to find someone with a known good miniDV camera.

Peter

[HamishBoxer]

Just a point ,if the problem with the pc,s is not the drives and you have the tape stuff on them, you should be able to rescue it.

[Eidolon]

I'm not sure of the extent of what's salvageable off the two PC's. ONe of them has a corrpupted second HDD, and the external seems to have died. But i think that the stuff I'm looking for, if it exists on a PC is on the older one that's got a dead power supply, and runs at a snails pace due to a bug put in the system by a fieewall program's bad update. I can hopefully get it working in time, but I'm not sure if the data exists on it. I know that I made a DVD of some of the stuff I'm after on that machine, so hopefully there may be something to find on there.

But back to the camera and tapes. I've found a number of tapes at the back of the drawer, and in a different drawer in the cupboard that seem to play mostly fine. Considering that theres nothing magnetic in the immediate vicinity, the best assumption I can come to is that moisture has gotten to them despite my best efforts, and affected them. They seem to essentially be playing, other than breaking up, as dirty tapes, as running a headcleaner through seems to help the camera a bit. Otherwise, putting another tape in afterwards that's usually ok, results in the same problems.

I'm not sure if there's anyway to save these tapes? I have some VHS and U-Matic tapes, and some floppy discs all stored in the same area, and other than a small bit of mould being present on a couple of the vhs tapes, everything seems fine. VHS and floppies all work fine that I tested. Whatever's caused this seems to have only affected the MiniDV tapes .

[TIMTAPE]

Mini DV format is very high these days on lists of endangered video formats. Mini DV was a marvel of miniaturisation at the time (from mid 90's) but was always going to be problematic in the long term as it squeezed the data onto a very small tape area and the whole system worked to incredibly fine tolerances (VHS was far more luxurious and physically robust even though the picture quality was worse.)

Especially on Long Play speed, the Mini DV recorded tracks are incredibly narrow and it takes only a slight mechanical misalignment for the read head to miss some of the recorded track, resulting in slight pixellation at best and blank screen at worst, with audio dropout as well.

The Metal tape formulation means demagnetisation is less of a problem than with Chrome or Ferric. The problems are more mechanical.

You mentioned mould. A speck of mould on a VHS tape which has little effect may be enough to not only seriously drop out the picture and sound on DV but literally tear the very thin tape apart in a characteristic long shallow diagonal tear which is impossible to repair. This is because a small amount of mould sitting on the edge of the tape pack can be enough to glue one tape wind to the next and shred it as the player attempts to unwind the reel.

In expert hands mould affected tapes can be transferred with little or no losses, but preferably before attempting to play the tape. I know of only one company which can deal with flood and mould affected tapes, Specs Bros in the US but there may be people in the UK.

If the new recording you made seems OK it's possible there is slight mechanical misalignment between the tapes and the camera, even though it was the camera on which they were originally recorded. Maybe the camera's internal mech needs a good manual clean and service by a skilled tech. That may be enough. Or a tape guide lockoff screw may have worked loose and the tape may not be now tracking across the rotary heads correctly.

Or as mentioned try another camera known to be in excellent condition, and especially one which doesnt physically damage the tapes. It's increasingly hard to find such cameras (used only) in good nick these days and they can be incredibly difficult to work on. I only go in so deep. Just finding a good pinch roller can be a challenge as new off the shelf parts dried up years ago.

The most dangerous time for the very vulnerable DV tape can be when playing it. Everything has to be pretty well spot on mechanically, both tape and player.

But with Hamish I'd first explore whether the hard drives to which you initially transferred these tapes can be accessed. If they can you will have saved a lot of retransferring in real time.

Still I wouldnt toss those tapes. I've kept all of my Mini DV tapes even though the important stuff is mostly backed up on HDD's.

[Eidolon]

A number of the old tapes that were stored at the back of the drawer, or in another drawer, play ok though, so I don't think its an issue with the camera.

Playback of 'bad tapes' takes a number of forms, including 'wobbly blocks', frozen pixel blocks, and even sometimes, pixels/image being carried over onto a different tape I put in afterwards. I'm assuming that the moisture is affecting the head, or that the tapes might be shedding. I've put some of the tapes on a shelving unit over a radiator in aother room where I keep some of my VHS tapes. It's not close enough to do any heat damage, but a gentle uprising wamth might help to dry out any moisture contained within.

If I can get the pc woth the firewire port fixed hopefully later this year, I can maybe start transferring what I can across, and encoding them to MP4 for back-up storage on USB stick. It's a matter of project priorites, some things matter more than others. It'll be a matter of slowly catalogiing everything and seeing what I can save. I mould clean VHS tapes easily enough, but I'm not sure how to clean a MiniDV tape as they're so small and fiddly.

[Refugee]

I would use a hard disk to USB converter to read off the hard drives from the old computers.
They are pretty cheap.

[HamishBoxer]

I just in main wind/rewind mouldy tapes, though I am unsure re mini ones. Plus you need to clean the machine afterwards.

My thoughts too re HDD,s.

[mark pirate]

It could be the camera at fault, I had similar problems with my Panasonic camera.
Some tapes played fine, while others had the same problems you are having.
I got given a Sony camera, this played back the problem tapes pretty well, good enough to transfer the recordings to my PC.

It seems that a lot of these cameras develop capacitor failure, not something I would attempt to repair!

I would try your tapes on another machine, these things are pretty worthless these days, so you may be able to get a good working example for very little outlay.


Mark