Dear friends,

I recieved a whole lot of MiniDV cassettes containing old family video’s.

Does anyone know if and where I could rent/buy the machine that can do this?
There are atleast 200 cassettes so I’m not sure what would be the best option regarding cost and time.

I live in Limburg but distance is no issue.

Thanks for helping me with some useful information!

by Sea_Empress

6 comments

  1. I think given the amount of tapes you have, buying the hardware that is able to convert them, and doing it yourself (and selling it afterwards) will be best for your wallet if you have the time to do it.

  2. You’ll need the following :

    – A machine that can read these (will look into it after work), you can probs find this for cheap in second hand stores (tweedehands, cash converters, perhaps ebay)

    – Elgato Video Capture card (convert your video output to a file). Support AV and S-VIDEO, so as long as your machine has one of those, you’re good.

    – Lots of free time (you have to play the full cassette to record it)

    – (recommended) A harddrive to store it all on

    Idk abt renting possibilities, I just bought myself a VCR for €25 and the capture card at around €90-100. Felt cheaper.

  3. I would recommend against doing this yourself.

    Theoretically you could just find yourself an old camera, a FireWire cable (also called iLink on Sony devices) and a computer that still has this connection. However, in my experience this kind of tapes are pretty sensitive, and the reading heads of the old equipment are probably dirty or just faulty. You’ll waste your time trying to get rid of artifacts and in the worst scenario lose some tapes when they start jamming.

    I would try a service like http://mediafix.be/

    I don’t have experience with them though, but if they have the proper equipment it should be a fairly simple job. I had some 8mm films digitised by a guy that I would want to recommend, but he seems to have retired…

  4. Best results will be with the camcorder that was used to record these. Or at least the same type.
    Digitising wont be necessary, this is allready digital.
    You’ ll need a firewire ( 400/800) equipped computer, or the the proper adapters. And then a video capture capable program ( fcpx,… ).

  5. An old school friend of mine does exactly this and recently moved to Limburg as well, small world.

    [Voorgoed | Digitalisatie video – foto – audio | Molenstraat, Bree](https://www.voorgoed.be/)

    Can’t vouch for his work per se, but he’s a good guy and has been doing this for a while so assume he’s doing something right.

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