Figured I'd share this footage to share the methods I use to convert my tapes, and yes, I did go to Chuck E Cheese with the point of filming with this old camera!

shot on a sony dcr pc-330e

Hi everyone,

I have a problem with my Sony HVR-Z5E.

Tape cassette compartment (loading mechanism) is stuck in the fully ejected/open position and refuses to go down. The issue started when I opened the compartment to remove a tape. The tape was removed easily and without any force, but the mechanism failed to retract back down.

So... What can I do to fix this? What is the cause of this problem?

Pls... help me..:<

Hi everyone, I was wondering if anyone can help me out.

My dad passed away a few years ago and I kept his old video camera. I remember him filming when we went on trips, adventures, events and sometimes just randomly. I would love to see that old footage. I wonder what the world looked like through his eyes when I was little as we didnt have a great relationship/ a lot of contact throughout the rest of my life.

I haven't tried to figure it out yet because it's very emotional for me and I haven't had mindspace for it. I finally feel ready to try but I don't have a lot of knowledge about MiniDV/ digitizing.

It's a JVC GR-DVL14EG. I only have the camera, the tapes and the battery that's in the camera. No charger or cables. I use a Dell Latitude 5510 Windows laptop.

I would love for someone to tell me exactly what I need to buy and do, preferably as cheap as possible as I'm on a budget.

It would be amazing if I could copy the footage to my laptop so I can watch it and share it with people around me.

Thank you 🫶🏽

Hi guys, I have an issue with my sony handycam LCD screen. The touch screen doesn’t work at all and I can’t do anything without it. I bought a remote, but it doesn’t work. Gemini says that I have to toggle on this function in settings, but how if touch screen is not working.

I tried to reattach those thin brown parts inside the LCD - didn’t help. I digitalise the tapes, so I need only play, fast forward and rewind buttons.

Any ideas?

I recently bought a JVC GR C1, and everything seems operable, except the ejection mechanism doesn’t want to work. I can power on the camcorder just fine but as soon as I press eject, the light starts blinking, and it goes into failure mode, although when I press play the video drum spins so that makes me think it still works. If anyone knows how to get the eject mechanism to work please tell me I’m thinking of taking the eject mechanism and internals apart to hopefully find a problem eg.(broken gear/belt, dried grease, etc). I’ve had several of these GR C1 cameras in the past all with different problems, and this is the closest I’ve gotten to a working one.

Not exactly normal tech support but I feel this is a good place to ask.

Progress report: It's coming along nicely.

DV, DVCAM, DVCPRO25, DVCPRO50 (incl. 4 channel audio) all working, although testing phase not finished yet.

...next is HDV and MicroMV, Hi8, Video8.

Reposting to try and reach more of the right people! Would love any advice

I recently got a 2010 MacBook Pro for saving my tapes however when I tried to do it for the first time yesterday dv rescue didn’t see my camera. iMovie 6 hd was laggy and stutters during import also I noticed it affect my camcorder too. The tape which plays flawless when not trying to be imported to Mac then has audio cutouts and matches the sttters that appears on the Mac. I tried high sierras QuickTime whatever version that is but it’s either chopppy and also says stopped recording. In my mind I wanna say it’s either a bad cable or a slow hdd but does anyone here ever had this issue? Lmk anything

So I'm trying out DVRescue GUI/CLU and vrecord to archive some of my miniDV tapes, and I'm running into issues, and I need some guidance.

Hardware:
JVC MiniDV/S-VHS Combo unit (Model HR-DVS3U)
Canon VIXA HV40
2012 5,1 MacPro w/macOS Mojave 10.14.6
2019 MacBook Pro w/macOS Sonoma 14.8.9 w/Thunderbolt 3 (USB‑C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter -> Thunderbolt 2 Adapter to Firewire 800 Adapter.

First off lets start out with software requirements.

DVRescue's website shows version 24.07 compatible with

10.12 (Sierra),
10.13 (High Sierra),
10.14 (Mojave),
10.15 (Catalina),
11 (Big Sur),
12 (Monterey)

However, their documentation shows only Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma 14, and Sequoia as compatible. It notes that macOS Mojave 10.14.6 and older will not work. I believe the documentation hasn't been updated with the new OS list but...

I can confirm that while DVRescue opens and runs on my MacPro with Mojave, DVRescue can't find either the JVC or the Canon. I can confirm that Mojave can see the devices and, using iMovie, can playback and record on both devices. (In iMovie, Canon HV40 seems to only record video, no audio for whatever reason.)

I also wanted to try out DVRescue CLI, however, Homebrew is only available on Sonoma and later, so that leaves my MacPro out of the picture. Same goes for trying out vrecord on my MacPro.

That being said. I'll be using my MacBook Pro from here on out.

With DVRescue GUI on my MacBook Pro, with my Canon HV40, DVRescue sees the HV40, but I have no DV control. Even if I press play on the camcorder manually, I see no video playing in the preview.

With the JVC, DVRescue sees and is able to have limited control. I am able to do basic functions; however, there are times when DVRescue will lose control, and the JVC will continue playing the tape when I have already pressed 'stop' on DVRescue. I'd have to manually stop the tape on the JVC and unplug/plug the FireWire cable again for DVRescue to regain control.

This isn't too much of an issue as long as I am able to record.

Which I am, but I believe DVRescue's inability to reliably control the JVC, DVRescue isn't able to do 'Retakes' when encountering tape errors, unless I'm misunderstanding how Retakes function works. In my mind, when I read from the documentation, "DVRescue will automatically rewind and try to recapture segments of tape that have errors." I assume that DVRescue will stop the tape at the first sign of error and rewind to attempt to re-read. Unless it waits until you stop the capture entirely, and it will go back automatically and attempt the recapture? Beuacse their isnt any online video of how this process works in a real world cenareo Its unclear to me.

So I moved on with DVRescue CLI; however, immediately when I attempt to capture, I get an error
"fd:: Invalid data found when processing input"

Feeling defeated by DVRescue, so I moved on to vrecord.

With the HV40, I actually do get limited control when I have Deck Control enabled. I can only Play; I have no other controls ie. stop, rewind, play. Also, as soon as I attempt to record, I get this error

"The configuration file uses an invalid value of 0x850001ee412f: VIXIA HV40 [DV] for DVRESCUE_INPUT_CHOICE. Valid values are: 0x850001ee412f: VIXIA HV40 [DV]. Please restart vrecord in edit mode (vrecord -e) or update the configuration file at /Users/animefuntv/.vrecord.conf."

I did use 'vrecord -e' but still the same error.

Moving on to the JVC, I get the same issue with Deck Control. I can only Play. This time it can record and data log.

Though again, I'm unsure how "7. When dvrescue encounters an error, the software will automatically rewind and attempt to recapture the problematic frames." in the vrecords documentation actually works.

My theory is that if vrecord isn't able to reliably control the JVC's deck controls (just like DVRescue), it is unable to rewind and recapture.

Again, I don't see any videos on how this actually works.

It's my belief that its prolly both my Canon and JVC that are incompatible with DVRescue/vrecord, which sucks because it's the only two DV systems I have.

ALL help or guidance is absolutely appreciated.

Hi everyone, I'm new here. I've had a Handycam (DCR-DVD650) for about a year. A few weeks ago, I started having this problem: it keeps turning on and off even when it's plugged into the wall, even though the battery is installed. It does this even when it's “off.”

Has anyone else had this problem before or should I take it to a specialist?

Hi everyone, new to this subreddit so apologies in advance if this is a common question. I recently found my old camcorder along with a box full of tapes of old family memories/events.

I wish to digitize these tapes and do not know what cables/adapters/ software, etc I need in order to transfer these tapes from the camcorder to my macbook or any other storage device.
Any advice and suggestions is welcome, thank you

Camera model: Canon optura 20

As the title states, i'm having issues transferring my videos to my laptop.

I have a canon MV400 camcorder, new minidv tapes, an old macbook running on Linux cinnamon with all the right programs installed. I have a brand new firewire cable which have the correct ends.

The camera itself is in great condition, the laptop too. The wire is brand new.

The laptop never seems to recognize the connected camera. It always tells me "camera does not exist".

Any help?

EDIT: FIXED! Thanks to u/Tashi999 i figured out my laptop was running a too new version of linux. The last version to support it seems to be linux 19.

Hey all, my grandfather recently gave me his old Canon MV600i miniDV camcorder. I can't find much info on the model, aside from the user manual it came with and that it was introduced in 2003. It (suprisingly) has a still working li-ion battery. I have a DSLR but have never really gotten into camcorders. Does anyone know if this is a good model of camcorder, and any problems it may have?

The one problem I've noticed is that when it is turned on cold, the image produces a faint, stretched image, but after a while it fixes itself. Looks to me like a capacitor problem but I don't really know how I'd go about fixing that.

There's a 60 min tape inside that has some old videos that I want to transfer to my computer. Does anybody know how I might go about that? I read the manual, and it looks like I need a MiniDV FireWire socket to USB adaptor, if that exists? The other questions is finding software I could use- coming from 2003 the software is heinously outdated. If anyone knows of any modern software I could use to get it to work, it would mean a lot.

Thanks in advance 🙏

I’m not sure what’s wrong with my vx2000 every time I record on tapes and try to export them the play back stops every 3 or 2 seconds and I used a tape head cleaner and new tapes but it doesn’t seem to work