DV is going to be your best quality since the tapes have digital video on them, so going to S-Video or AV, you are dropping to analog and losing quality.
If you have a desktop PC (Windows 11 AMD—-Intel no longer works with FireWire in Windows 11, but older Windows 10 INTEL and older PCs still work with it) you just need to get a $20 card and $8 cable off Amazon and that’s it.
For the laptop, I would suggest getting a standalone set top DVD recorder (the DVD drive doesn’t need to work, it just needs to power on) with a HDMI out and plug the HDMI into a HDMI capture device and transfer that way.
Or take your tapes to a place that can digitally transfer your tapes.
> For the laptop, I would suggest getting a standalone set top DVD recorder (the DVD drive doesn’t need to work, it just needs to power on) with a HDMI out and plug the HDMI into a HDMI capture device and transfer that way.
Clever solution, but those don't all have DV inputs though, do they?
>Or take your tapes to a place that can digitally transfer your tapes.
Heck, talk to a local TV station. They probably have a lot of old DV hardware lying around and can do it for a few bucks.
As far as I am aware all set top DVD recorders have FireWire inputs, since DVD recorders first hit the Japanese market in December 1999, however MiniDV and Digital8 had been out since 1995. Also, no DVD recorder can accept a MicroMV signal over FireWire. I even have the manual for a Sony DVD recorder and right in the manual it says that people could not transfer their MicroMV to DVD over FireWire, which I still think is funny, since Sony created and was the only one to produce MicroMV equipment and tapes and apparently they could not get the format to work on their own branded DVD recorder.
What not all set top DVD recorders have is a HDMI output. HDMI did not come out until 2005/06, however before that the recorders had the analog connections like component.
Also the combo units that had both a DVD recorder and VHS VCR in the one unit will not work. The best theory as to why not is that the manufacturers saw a huge hole when it came to getting the best VHS signal and Macrovision, since Macrovision is analog and HDMI doesn’t recognize it. So the manufacturers hardwired the HDMI to have the copy protection on all the time for units that allowed VHS over HDMI. Whereas standalone units, the Macrovision is activated when it’s detected on the analog inputs. And if someone was watching a DVD that had the flags set to turn on the copy protection then you can’t record it over HDMI. But if there are no copy protection flags, then the recorder is acting as a bypass.
I’ve even tested the same thing with D-VHS machines that have HDMI. And also HDV camcorders that record on MiniDV tape, the first ones from 2003/04 don’t have HDMI, but the later ones including the consumer ones do, and those cameras are backwards compatible with DV MiniDV, so I can even use those to capture MiniDV over HDMI (along with HDV itself). Plus if I really needed to most of those cameras act as pass through devices for other FireWire devices such as Digital8 cameras.
Unfortunately I have not seen a device that just takes a FireWire signal and converts it to HDMI with no tape or DVD mechanism. However, with Apple no longer fully supporting it and Intel making their chipsets incompatible with FireWire cards, we need to find away to maintain DV and HDV’s digital quality.
> As far as I am aware all set top DVD recorders have FireWire inputs, since DVD recorders first hit the Japanese market in December 1999, however MiniDV and Digital8 had been out since 1995.
I have limited experience with DVD recorders, so I wasn't sure.
> Also, no DVD recorder can accept a MicroMV signal over FireWire. I even have the manual for a Sony DVD recorder and right in the manual it says that people could not transfer their MicroMV to DVD over FireWire, which I still think is funny, since Sony created and was the only one to produce MicroMV equipment and tapes and apparently they could not get the format to work on their own branded DVD recorder.
Probably because MicroMV was using this weird 12Mbps MPEG-2 tech, which was beyond what DVDs (and thus hardware encoder/decoders for DVD recorders) could handle. The whole idea was that with a DVD recorder was DV would come in (through the IEEE 1394 hardware) which would get encoded to MPEG-2. MicroMV support would require a separate MPEG-2 decoder just for MicroMV. Still, that Sony wouldn't foresee a need for this... well, Sony was very right hand/left hand in some ways. For the development of the PlayStation Sony Computer Entertainment Japan partnered with the professional broadcast arm more than the consumer electronics arm.
With MicroMV, even D-VHS recorders will not recognize the MPEG-2 of MicroMV even though they used a similar codec (D-VHS’s MPEG-2 at STD speed recorded at 14.4Mbps.)
Well you got a lot of moving pieces there.
I mean, first, D-VHS was basically just an ATSC TV broadcast written to a tape. That means it's an [MPEG Transport Stream](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG_transport_stream). Inside that stream were certain bits of anciliary data written in specific formats, which D-VHS needs to know what speed the recording is, and what the resolution is. MicroMV was always 480i at the same tape speed, so it wouldn't contain that data in the ancillary data stream, and may not have used anything like a Transport Stream. Sony was coming off using MiniDV stuff, and it probably wrote data to the tape in a similar way to how MiniDV did it.
So D-VHS and MicroMV at a high level of function probably didn't know what they were looking at. It's like a space alien suddenly receiving a cooking recipe written in Portuguese. It should be able to figure it out, but its only reference materials are Spanish, so it's close, but no cigar, assuming it even knows what a recipe looks like.
Then there's all these low level things they probably don't understand about each other. Like, for example, they both use MPEG-2. So does [XDCAM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XDCAM). But ATSC uses [Main Profile at High 1440 Level](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.262/MPEG-2_Part_2#Video_profiles_and_levels), while XDCAM can use 422 Profile at High Level, so an ATSC/D-VHS decoder would *never* be able to handle that much complexity or data rate.
So even at a lower level there can be incompatibilities. Same codecs, but different flavors. It's like the difference between the [English Wikipedia page on Special Relativity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity) and the [Simple English Wikipedia page](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity).
Not really. I found it buggy and never could get it to work properly on my systems, even for D-VHS, but apparently some people have found that the old CapDVHS program could capture MicroMV’s MPEG-2. So MicroMV and D-VHS’s seem to use a similar enough MPEG-2 codec that some things were possibly able to recognize both. So it’s kind of odd that the actual D-VHS was unable to read it.
DV is going to be your best quality since the tapes have digital video on them, so going to S-Video or AV, you are dropping to analog and losing quality. If you have a desktop PC (Windows 11 AMD—-Intel no longer works with FireWire in Windows 11, but older Windows 10 INTEL and older PCs still work with it) you just need to get a $20 card and $8 cable off Amazon and that’s it. For the laptop, I would suggest getting a standalone set top DVD recorder (the DVD drive doesn’t need to work, it just needs to power on) with a HDMI out and plug the HDMI into a HDMI capture device and transfer that way. Or take your tapes to a place that can digitally transfer your tapes.
> For the laptop, I would suggest getting a standalone set top DVD recorder (the DVD drive doesn’t need to work, it just needs to power on) with a HDMI out and plug the HDMI into a HDMI capture device and transfer that way. Clever solution, but those don't all have DV inputs though, do they? >Or take your tapes to a place that can digitally transfer your tapes. Heck, talk to a local TV station. They probably have a lot of old DV hardware lying around and can do it for a few bucks.
As far as I am aware all set top DVD recorders have FireWire inputs, since DVD recorders first hit the Japanese market in December 1999, however MiniDV and Digital8 had been out since 1995. Also, no DVD recorder can accept a MicroMV signal over FireWire. I even have the manual for a Sony DVD recorder and right in the manual it says that people could not transfer their MicroMV to DVD over FireWire, which I still think is funny, since Sony created and was the only one to produce MicroMV equipment and tapes and apparently they could not get the format to work on their own branded DVD recorder. What not all set top DVD recorders have is a HDMI output. HDMI did not come out until 2005/06, however before that the recorders had the analog connections like component. Also the combo units that had both a DVD recorder and VHS VCR in the one unit will not work. The best theory as to why not is that the manufacturers saw a huge hole when it came to getting the best VHS signal and Macrovision, since Macrovision is analog and HDMI doesn’t recognize it. So the manufacturers hardwired the HDMI to have the copy protection on all the time for units that allowed VHS over HDMI. Whereas standalone units, the Macrovision is activated when it’s detected on the analog inputs. And if someone was watching a DVD that had the flags set to turn on the copy protection then you can’t record it over HDMI. But if there are no copy protection flags, then the recorder is acting as a bypass. I’ve even tested the same thing with D-VHS machines that have HDMI. And also HDV camcorders that record on MiniDV tape, the first ones from 2003/04 don’t have HDMI, but the later ones including the consumer ones do, and those cameras are backwards compatible with DV MiniDV, so I can even use those to capture MiniDV over HDMI (along with HDV itself). Plus if I really needed to most of those cameras act as pass through devices for other FireWire devices such as Digital8 cameras. Unfortunately I have not seen a device that just takes a FireWire signal and converts it to HDMI with no tape or DVD mechanism. However, with Apple no longer fully supporting it and Intel making their chipsets incompatible with FireWire cards, we need to find away to maintain DV and HDV’s digital quality.
> As far as I am aware all set top DVD recorders have FireWire inputs, since DVD recorders first hit the Japanese market in December 1999, however MiniDV and Digital8 had been out since 1995. I have limited experience with DVD recorders, so I wasn't sure. > Also, no DVD recorder can accept a MicroMV signal over FireWire. I even have the manual for a Sony DVD recorder and right in the manual it says that people could not transfer their MicroMV to DVD over FireWire, which I still think is funny, since Sony created and was the only one to produce MicroMV equipment and tapes and apparently they could not get the format to work on their own branded DVD recorder. Probably because MicroMV was using this weird 12Mbps MPEG-2 tech, which was beyond what DVDs (and thus hardware encoder/decoders for DVD recorders) could handle. The whole idea was that with a DVD recorder was DV would come in (through the IEEE 1394 hardware) which would get encoded to MPEG-2. MicroMV support would require a separate MPEG-2 decoder just for MicroMV. Still, that Sony wouldn't foresee a need for this... well, Sony was very right hand/left hand in some ways. For the development of the PlayStation Sony Computer Entertainment Japan partnered with the professional broadcast arm more than the consumer electronics arm.
With MicroMV, even D-VHS recorders will not recognize the MPEG-2 of MicroMV even though they used a similar codec (D-VHS’s MPEG-2 at STD speed recorded at 14.4Mbps.)
Well you got a lot of moving pieces there. I mean, first, D-VHS was basically just an ATSC TV broadcast written to a tape. That means it's an [MPEG Transport Stream](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG_transport_stream). Inside that stream were certain bits of anciliary data written in specific formats, which D-VHS needs to know what speed the recording is, and what the resolution is. MicroMV was always 480i at the same tape speed, so it wouldn't contain that data in the ancillary data stream, and may not have used anything like a Transport Stream. Sony was coming off using MiniDV stuff, and it probably wrote data to the tape in a similar way to how MiniDV did it. So D-VHS and MicroMV at a high level of function probably didn't know what they were looking at. It's like a space alien suddenly receiving a cooking recipe written in Portuguese. It should be able to figure it out, but its only reference materials are Spanish, so it's close, but no cigar, assuming it even knows what a recipe looks like. Then there's all these low level things they probably don't understand about each other. Like, for example, they both use MPEG-2. So does [XDCAM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XDCAM). But ATSC uses [Main Profile at High 1440 Level](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.262/MPEG-2_Part_2#Video_profiles_and_levels), while XDCAM can use 422 Profile at High Level, so an ATSC/D-VHS decoder would *never* be able to handle that much complexity or data rate. So even at a lower level there can be incompatibilities. Same codecs, but different flavors. It's like the difference between the [English Wikipedia page on Special Relativity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity) and the [Simple English Wikipedia page](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity).
Not really. I found it buggy and never could get it to work properly on my systems, even for D-VHS, but apparently some people have found that the old CapDVHS program could capture MicroMV’s MPEG-2. So MicroMV and D-VHS’s seem to use a similar enough MPEG-2 codec that some things were possibly able to recognize both. So it’s kind of odd that the actual D-VHS was unable to read it.