Dusting off the blank DVDs

The age old problem of tape based media is that they are fragile.  Tapes are so susceptible to damp, humidity, electromagnetic interference and even simply being stored in the wrong orientation (my top tip is don't ever stack video tapes on their side... always upright.)

Anyway, capturing analog footage onto pc, collating and editing it and laying out to portable hard drive or DVD has always been a bit of a slog.  It’s a job that I tend to put off for a rainy day, but of course I rarely get around to it.  However I’ve realised that some of my old tapes are getting on for 30 years old, and it’s only a matter of time before they succumb to tape rot.  I needed to find a solution for quickly and easily archiving that old material.

And this is where the portable DVD recorder comes in.  I spotted this old Sony VRD model on eBay for less than £35 and snapped it up.  The VRD-MC series was first issued around 2006 and was designed to allow for quick and east transfer from camcorders and video recorders to DVD.  It’s basically a PC-DVDR drive in a case with a small LCD screen.

Mine is a second generation VRD-MC3

The MC-3 appears almost identical to the earlier MC-1 and it’s not immediately obvious what features changed between the models.  For the MC-3 the only real difference is the addition of a USB connector to allow direct docking with Sony branded HDD and DVD Handycams.

The MC-3 features a simple interface with settings for various footage sources, you simply select the appropriate source (e.g. ‘Analogue Video to DVD’) stick in a blank DVD and press play on the camcorder and hit the record button.  That’s it.  The lcd screen lets you keep an eye on the footage while it’s transferred and when the capture is finished you can either finalise the disc or add more footage by connecting another source and pressing the record button again.

The VRD-MC-3 has connections for analog/phono connectors and s-video as well as an iLink 1394 connection for DV cameras.  The system only supports Standard Definition video so it won’t be any use for transferring HDV.  There are slots for Sony Duo memory sticks, SD cards or Compact Flash.

I used Sony branded DVD+R discs to make sure I had the best compatibility with my living room DVD player as well as PC.  These discs seem to be getting a bit more expensive these days but hopefully they won’t disappear from the market for a few years yet.

So if you are looking for a quick and easy method to archive old analogue tapes, without the hassle of booting up the PC, or you want to transfer some iLink MiniDV footage then it would be worth picking up one of these recorders.

I’d recommend either the MC3 like mine or the slightly later MC5 as both of those models feature the S-Video connector.  The MC6 doesn’t support S-Video and is particularly low on features compared to the earlier models.  However the final model the MC10 does support S-Video so clearly there were a lot of complaints about the MC6.

The VRD-MC-5 (Pictured above) features an S-Video connector.

The VRD-MC-10 (Pictured above) was the final model in the series.  It added some extra functionality for the DVD menus and reinstated the S-Video connection which was missing for the MC6. The casing is slightly more compact and the plain black colouring is perhaps a little more hi-tech looking than the earlier white/black versions.

Clean over my heads...

Among my many camcorders are a couple of Sony V90e models, these were one of the early Video8 camcorders when they were still fairly large and bulky machines, before the smaller tape formats and palmcorders became available.

The V90e is the same type of camera used in the Steven Soderburgh movie ‘Sex, Lies & Videotape’ and famously pictured in the promotional materials for the movie.

Neither of mine has worked in decades, but on a whim I decided to see if I could resurrect them.  One of them was in good shape cosmetically but tape playback was really choppy with lines all over the screen.

I had assumed the problem was a tracking issue, which would need some specialist equipment to fix, but I thought I might try clearing the heads to see if that helped.

I bought some chamois cleaning swabs with bendable plastic handles (these are much better than cotton swabs as the cotton ones will tend to leave fibres on the recording heads) and set up a clean space to open up the camera.

In order to reach the heads for cleaning I had to remove the tape door cover, which is held in place by a couple of tiny screws.  Removing the screws allows the cover to slide up and off the frame, leaving the tape transport and heads exposed.

I coated a swab in isopropyl (from a vhs head cleaning kit) and then held it gently against the head drum while slowly rotating the heads in an anti-clockwise direction.  I used latex gloves to avoid adding grease or fingerprints to the heads.

After doing this a couple of times I reassembled the camera, hooked up the power and inserted a tape.

Incredibly the cleaning did the trick.  The picture playback was now almost totally clear, with only an occasional flicker in the playback.  The camera still has a few visible bits of dust and lint inside so I expect I will need to repeat this process at some point, but I’m really pleased with the results of my first ever attempt to clean heads without a cleaning tape.

If you have an old camcorder that won’t playback cleanly then it might be worth trying this method to see if it fixes the problem.

Mystery Film

 

This weekend was spent organising storage boxes and locating misplaced film equipment.  Old cameras and lenses.  I found this forgotten old Super 8mm cartridge in a box, no idea what’s on it, how old it is or even if it’s one that I shot.  Mysterious.  I don’t have a Kodak envelope for it, and I think there aren’t any Kodak labs honouring the old prepaid envelopes these days anyway.  It’s been at least 20 years since I shot anything on my super 8 cameras!

After googling around I found a company called Gauge Film that advertises processing and telecine for S8 and 16mm films, so I’ve booked this mystery cart in for development.  We shall see what happens.  Maybe nothing, maybe an old film of mine or maybe some random film from someone else.  

Over to you Gauge Film. https://www.gaugefilm.co.uk/