Looking for a Digital 8 camcorder with AV inputs & TBC

[funkydude74]

G'day all.

I am looking for a Digital 8 camcorder that has analogue AV inputs and an inbuilt timebase corrector so I can use it as a portable video recorder to record from ancient tube video cameras I have dating from the 70s and 80s as I want to use them on remote locations without the need of using a big portable VHS recorder and long RCA leads. The cameras I use can be seen on my site http://1970scountdown.atspace.com/vintagevideo.html . Timebase correction is needed for my early cameras I use such as my Sony AVC-3200CE http://1970scountdown.atspace.com/avc3200.html as those cameras use random fields which give not completely stable output when recording to DVD recorder in which the motion will get jerky at times.

So can anyone suggest any camcorder makes and models for the job it will be much appreciated.

Cheers
Troy

[Ghitulescu]

Any D8 would convene, as studio cameras do not have TB errors (the digitizing part of any D8 can easily cope with the input signal). Your camera shouldn't give you TB errors, unless its electronics is broken.

[2Bdecided]

Any D8 would convene, as studio cameras do not have TB errors (the digitizing part of any D8 can easily cope with the input signal). Your camera shouldn't give you TB errors, unless its electronics is broken.Quite the opposite. If the camera is old enough (especially B&W NTSC) it's amazing it can be digitised at all. As the OP said, the field ID can be a bit random, and the line/field/frame frequency can be quite different from what modern equipment expects, while still being perfectly within the original specification (and the B&W broadcast spec).


Love your photo of your video collection Troy.

It will be easier to find a miniDV machine with analogue input that Digital8 machine - those are going up in value due to their comparative rarity, and their use in getting Video8 and Digital8 onto PCs.

Some miniDV camcorders have great TBCs for VHS sources built in (see threads over at the videohelp.com forum) - but whether they'll work for your camera is something you'll have to experiment with. You might need a full frame synchroniser and I'm not sure camcorders have this.

It easy enough to get old miniDV camcorders from eBay - though in Europe finding ones with analogue inputs is tricky. Quite easy in the USA though I think.

Cheers,
David.

[Ghitulescu]

Maybe I said something wrong - I know that cameras can have a variable output but well within the standards, I tried to say that once a synch pulse is available, then the receiving gear can synch to it (which BTW is exactly what a TBC does, on the receiving end). If the electronics within that camera is broken (I mean the deflection and so on) the signal would be anyway distorted and no TBC would ever correct it. If a TV can synch to the camera, then any D8 with analog-in can cope, my opinion (analog-in is coupled with Video8/Hi8-playback and this is coupled in turn with TBC).

I also had a tube TV camera (well it was B/W PAL and early '80ies) and had no problem recording from it, without any TBC at all (other than what my DVD-recorder had).

But I had no experience (and probably never will) with BW NTSC tube cameras.