So here's the 87 gigabytes of Y2K-era Digital8 NASA footage of cool NASA people doing tests with parabolic zero-g simulation flights. Tapes graciously given to me by @kapn a few months ago but I'm very good at procrastinating.
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I use outdated technology just for fun, listen to crappy music, and watch a lot of horror movies. Expect posts about These Things. I talk a lot.
Check tags like Star Trek Archive and Media Piracy to find things I share for others.
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letterboxd.com/aependell/A lot of the Digital8 tapes I am currently capturing were recorded on the Dreaded Sony Metal Evaporate tapes. named so because the metal strip fucking evaporates (onto your video heads) after a couple years or something. Ironically Sony, the company primarily behind the 8mm tape format, is known to have produced some of the most unreliable tapes in the format's history, their ME tapes being notably historically atrocious for shedding.
Fortunately for me the person who sent me these tapes also sent me a Hi8 cleaning cassette (which are unbelievably overpriced on eBay right now) so I can just run that for like 20 seconds rather than having to disassemble the camcorder and run the video heads against alcohol-soaked paper for 5 minutes.
But yeah. If you want to get into 8mm tape formats. Don't buy Sony ME tapes. They shed. They've always shedded.
sample of the 8mm tapes I'm converting for a work friend. Deinterlaced with QTGMC, upscaled to 1080p with NNEDI3, and sharpened with FineSharpen.
... In the future I may hold off on the FineSharpen, because if I'm not mistaken both QTGMC and NNEDI3 apply their own sharpening which seems to only accentuate the haloing already present in the source files (either Video8 camcorders did processing that sharpened the footage, or the Digital8 camcorder I used for capture applied sharpening as it was output over firewire)
Anyways, it could look a hell of a lot worse. I'm happy enough with the results and I think my coworker will be as well. It might not look "1080p" but it does look "better than 480p"
I will offer to capture and upscale your videotapes, mini-DVDs, or weird outdated video files to modern 1080p60 (or 1080p50! I want a PAL camcorder or two sometime!) for free if you give me more camcorders. I will also pay shipping. Give me your camcorder.