[HN Gopher] Capturing and Archiving MiniDV Tapes on macOS
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Capturing and Archiving MiniDV Tapes on macOS
Author : h3mb3
Score : 66 points
Date : 2021-11-14 14:01 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (leolabs.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (leolabs.org)
| h2odragon wrote:
| Acquaintance bought some used minDV tapes off ebay; decided to
| look at a couple to see if there was anything on them...
|
| Veterinary Endoscope videos.
|
| the story was worth more than the tapes
| totoglazer wrote:
| Recent thread on doing this with Linux as well.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27956874
| pronoiac wrote:
| I think I had dozens of MiniDV tapes? I think I used dvgrab with
| some parameters. It looks like that was linux-only, and part of
| the now-defunct kino project. I'm glad I ripped them all a few
| years ago.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I did this over three Christmas holidays, with the hardware I had
| available each time -- Windows, Linux and Mac. The results are
| pretty much the same.
|
| Is there a lossless format that's smaller than the original DV?
| The 1.5TB I have is still annoying to handle.
| xoa wrote:
| > _Is there a lossless format that 's smaller than the original
| DV? The 1.5TB I have is still annoying to handle._
|
| Been a long time since I dealt with it, I converted all my
| remaining DV at long last start of the decade, so I might be
| fuzzy here. But IIRC the DV video codec itself was some 90s-era
| lossy, and the audio was flat out uncompressed. Before doing
| anything else I'd try doing something at the filesystem level,
| like putting it on a ZFS fs with big (at least 1 MB) records
| and a somewhat more aggressive compression like zstd-3 and see
| what happens. Even though video and audio is normally a very
| bad match for general reversible compression, for really old
| partly raw stuff you might get some level of savings for free
| which maybe would be good enough. Worth poking anyway since
| it'd be so lazy, I'd try it myself if I hadn't converted it all
| already.
|
| For actual reencode, if you want real lossless try taking a
| look at x265's lossless (and near-lossless) modes [0]. Gonna be
| bigger than even ultra high quality lossy but should still
| offer improvement over DV. For the audio probably just use
| FLAC. You can put both into an mkv. If you can be satisfied
| with _visually_ lossless then of course you can do much better,
| but that depends on whether you might want to use it as a
| source for more editing down the road.
|
| Finally, not sure what you mean by "annoying to handle" but
| 1.5TB isn't actually that much anymore. Are you sure you can't
| just throw hardware at it? Even a basic 2TB NVMe SSD right now
| is <$180 (and that's including a premium from the supply chain
| shortage, I bought cheaper drives last spring). Entry NVMe
| drives might be 30-50% the speed of higher end ones, but that
| still equates to gigabytes per second of sequential r/w which
| is what you'll be leaning on for video. Compared to the value
| of your time and futzing with it, just putting it on a stick or
| two might be worth it, particularly if you then back it up to
| Backblaze or Glacier or the like.
| beervirus wrote:
| Is HEVC really the best option for a long term format that will
| still be readable in a decade or three? Something more open and
| standardized seems preferable.
| LocalH wrote:
| One suggestion - as DV is an interlaced format, conversion to
| AVC/HEVC should perform a double-framerate deinterlace. ffmpeg
| supports yadif, which handles this quite well, pass it
| mode=send_field (for "output one frame per field) and parity=bff
| (as DV, whether PAL or NTSC, is always bottom field first). As
| all frames should usually be considered interlaced, the deint
| parameter (which can deinterlace only marked-as-interlaced
| frames) can be omitted.
|
| I see people converting SD video all the time and dropping half
| the fields because "well, it says 29.97fps!". The only time this
| is not an issue with DV is if the tape was recorded with a camera
| that has either a progressive 30fps or 24fps setting enabled.
|
| Edit: Wow, I don't know how to read. I see the author already did
| this. I'm just so used to people getting it wrong that I
| overlooked the fact that you got it right. I'll leave this here
| to take my karma lumps lol
| digitallyfree wrote:
| Alternatively you can just encode them interlaced as that's
| what the camera recorded the video as - AVC supports this,
| don't think HEVC does. My DV archives are encoded as interlaced
| AVC and I let the player's hardware or software deinterlacing
| take care of it.
| LocalH wrote:
| I haven't really explored the interlaced side of AVC. While I
| do like to preserve a properly interlaced version when
| possible, I also figured deinterlacing to the field rate
| sidesteps any weird issues with interlaced content that
| various players might exhibit.
| kingcharles wrote:
| You had the right mind to bring it to people's attention - it
| is such a common issue that gets overlooked.
| darknavi wrote:
| I did this (with the same daisy chain of connectors, without the
| protector) last year and it worked pretty well.
|
| iMovie actually splits the tape up per segment and even tries to
| datetime stamp the files. You quickly realize how much people
| didn't set the correct time on their cameras :)
|
| MiniDV is a lot less fun to archive because the files are already
| digital. A more fun project is digitizing old VHS tapes. With the
| right setup you can double the framerate and upscale a little bit
| and bring a HUGE breath of fresh air to them. Here is the guide I
| followed:
|
| https://macilatthefront.blogspot.com/2018/09/tutorial-4-sd-t...
| lostgame wrote:
| I find this fascinating. Back in the day - (2004-2009) - I
| absolutely loved using iMovie, and eventually Final Cut Express -
| with my G4 Mac Mini - the ease of use of the software and speedy
| FireWire 800 importing made for really fun times making skits
| with friends.
| runlevel1 wrote:
| The iMovie of that era really was spectacular. It was such a
| perfect balance between power and simplicity.
|
| EDIT: The story of how iMovie got nerfed is an interesting one:
| iMovie '08 began as an engineer's side project to build a tool
| that could put together a movie more quickly. So it did away
| with the more powerful features. Apparently leadership liked it
| so much they decided to make it the new iMovie.[1]
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/LSVJfn-BiYE?t=2168
| lostgame wrote:
| So he's the guy to blame for ruining the hell out of one of
| Apple's best software offerings ever. Grr.
| mackwell wrote:
| Great work and a good reference. I wish I had this to read when I
| went through a similar process after growing tired of storing a
| couple hundred miniDV tapes I had recorded as a teenager.
| Unfortunately I was not yet skilled enough to dive into the
| command line and so was using premiere pro and Lifeflix with
| great frustration. The endless problems (scene detection
| splitting clips on every glitch, wearing out player heads in
| multiple miniDV cameras and having to buy more, the ridiculous
| amount of time required capturing at 1x and being unable to
| really do it passively because of these issues) caused me to give
| up and send the whole lot into a digitizing service. For a few
| hundred bucks I got back DVDs and downloadable files of each tape
| and was done. I didn't have as much granular control over the
| capturing method or codec used etc, but honestly it was a major
| weight off my shoulders that I had been continuously starting and
| then putting off for a decade so I consider it money extremely
| well spent.
| newscracker wrote:
| I found this a bit strange:
|
| > iMovie and Final Cut support capturing from MiniDV and write
| the data straight to disk without any modification, but they
| didn't work out for me for two reasons:
|
| > There was no way to turn down the audio while a tape was being
| imported
|
| When I did a similar exercise (on an older Mac that had a
| FireWire port), iMovie worked quite well. Since the import
| happens in real time (a 60-minute recording will take 60 minutes
| to import), the audio and video are played on the camcorder. All
| I had to do was reduce the volume on the camcorder to prevent it
| from being too loud. There was no audio output from iMovie on the
| Mac during the import.
|
| Tip: If you can get a Mac with iMovie '06 (as opposed to iMovie
| '08), use that. The older version of iMovie is better (not as
| much dumbed down) than the newer version.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| > Connecting Mini FireWire to a modern MacBook with only USB-C
| ports takes a few adapters to achieve:
|
| > Thunderbolt 3 -> Thunderbolt 2
|
| > Thunderbolt 2 -> FireWire 800
|
| > FireWire 800 -> FireWire 400
|
| > FireWire 400 -> Mini FireWire
|
| Ummm... Lol yeah I suppose you could do that.
|
| I just used my old 2010 MBP which has a firewire port :)
|
| But indeed older Macs are pretty ideal for this as FireWire is an
| integrated part of the ecosystem.
|
| What was actually quite difficult is obtaining old versions of
| iMovie and QuickTime. I still had the old OS images, but Apple
| makes it impossible to get old versions from the app store. If
| you look for iMovie it just shows the latest version which is no
| longer supported for my old macOS (the latest my MBP could run)
| so it's a dead end.
|
| Eventually I found a link on Apple's site with a ZIP file of the
| iMovie files, and I needed to do something else to actually make
| it work (extracting and moving to /Applications wasn't enough). I
| don't remember exactly. It was a bit of a PITA but in the end I
| got it.
| bestouff wrote:
| I'm just using a cheap USB2-to-firewire cable on my Linux
| laptop. Works well.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Oh does that work ok? I'd have thought it might cause issues
| with overhead, as USB2 is only 80 Mbit more than Firewire 1.
| But the protocol for USB has more overhead.
|
| But of course a MiniDV stream doesn't use the whole 400 mbit.
|
| I'll look into that as I don't think my 2010 MBP will live
| forever and it's the last thing I have with firewire.
| Aloha wrote:
| DV ISTR is something like 25 megabits a second, 50 if its
| one of the pro varieties.
| jeffdubin wrote:
| Can you provide an example of such a device? I have yet to
| see any adapter other than those with a firewire jack on one
| end and USB plug on the other, but no protocol
| conversion/bridging/etc going on (and likely to ruin your
| day, given FW power runs at 12V and USB at 5V)
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