Digital storage? Who the hell wants digital storage?

… and the speakers.

I know, look their silly AMTRAC format that went up against mp3....

***** oh yeah, typo. That really held them back for a while in portable audio

***** I never used portable CD players as a teen, I used to stick with cassette Walkmans, as anti shock players were expensive and I had no computer worth beans to make CD-Rs anyway. The idea of taking your original albums out and about filled me with dread. Mixtapes were cheap and so were the players back then..

Bill bill at least their audio isn't proprietary anymore

***** It was used for MiniDiscs at first, and they should have dropped the ATRAC format after the MiniDiscs died out... But it's Sony...

DvdXploitr So Sony could charge people more money. In many ways, Sony was Apple before Apple.

Super late reply, but I've always used the font "VCR OSD Mono" for that kind of look, pretty sure Hi8 timestamps were that font with a thin black stroke on the outside.

i leave a comment to screenshot this later cause i was also wondering

someone recreated the font used in sony handycams at the time: fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1646448/sonycam-original

And do you still use it? If yes, do you transfer your recordings to digital? I still have it , too

>:o its Ruview >:o

www.totalrewind.org/misc/photos/ruvi_int.jpg

No need to wonder, I have a video about it: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ldChhaiptprUnp8.html

A JVC Everio GZ-MS120.

+fmoros Did the fact that the tape was built-in (and hence constantly reused and subject to wear) cause any problems for you?

hi, well, not only the tape is in the cartridge, I believe that also the machinery (such as reading/recording heads) is inside the cartridge. First thing I did was to order an extra cartridge. That was very handy so I did not have to transfer immediately after the cartridge was full. Also the cartridge suffered half the wearing. Replying to your initial question, I did not notice any problems due to the reusable nature of the system... but when I said that I used it a lot, I don't mean on a daily basis, I mean that I took several videos and it was my only camera for 2 or 3 years. regards

fmoros Thanks for the reply- yes, that was my point. From what I'd read, the head/tape cart wasn't meant to be swapped in and out. It was meant as a "service part", i.e. effectively built-in but still able to be replaced when it did break down. My thought was that it *would* break down because video tape wears out and gets damaged and this design effectively forces the use of the same single piece of tape over and over again! I bet I couldn't have got 3 VHS cassettes for £5 from my local Superdrug store if they'd each had a recording head built in!! :-) It's a clever design in its way, but it also seems horrible to me in its wastefulness...

www.elinetechnology.com/definition/712496-blc-back-light-compensation

thanks for the info, I thought it might have been something like that, you likely described it in the video and I missed it, still a shame, it would have been truly something if it had a backlit display

MrMaguire Yes, that's my TRV87. The Ruvi's audio is comparable to most Video8 or Hi8 camcorders with mono audio. The "Hi-Fi Stereo" models like the TRV87 sounded much better.

A few days ago, I found a PAL unit at some flea market for 5 bucks. I didn't know if it worked, but it did come with a video cartridge. Unfortunately the film is worn out and you can only watch the video on the LCD. It seems to work though, I just need to find a new cartridge and a PAL to NTSC converter. I do have the AV cable but since it's PAL, it will not display on any US TV. Oddly with PAL Hi8, you get less time for recording than NTSC, which VHS is the opposite. :P

Network Games 1000 Only one speed. It's probably already running at LP speed.

oh ok i get it so it only has one speed on the camera

Steven Smyth The older Cybershot cameras could record video, but most were limited to 15-second clips and/or had no audio, to avoid competing with Sony's camcorders.

SCK The Kai-Ken The Sharp Viewcams are much larger. The Ruvi is about the same height as an 8mm tape just by itself, and an inch wider.

I guess the picture I saw made it look smaller than it really was.

He says 5 seconds.

It's a pun.

Hobert McFarland I made it from two broken ones. I got one JVC with a bad lens and another with a broken LCD, and I put together the good parts of both.

That's the tape motor.

vwestlife Is that problem common to most Hi8 camras or is that a flaw of this cammra?

jamie marchant Most tape camcorders, regardless of format, have some audible tape motor noise... they were almost all like that, and people just accepted it.

vwestlife Uh I see.

I showed how to do it in the video!

OOOH! Stupid me, I could of just used my ears to listen to what you were saying :)

Here's a photo of one with a clear cover, so you can see what's inside: www.totalrewind.org/misc/photos/ruvi_int.jpg

wow, the tape head takes up most of the space. since head cleaning is not an option, these would have to rely on the Cue/review method of cleaning, lookes like the tape never unloads from the head either

dalekman tardis Hi8 is analog and Digital8 is, as the name suggests, digital. Most Digital8 camcorders can play Hi8 tapes, but Hi8 camcorders cannot play Digital8 tapes.

Esrin Caad On purpose. :-)

It's KZfaq's fault. It is impossible to have frame tearing on an analog camcorder.

Have you noticed tearing in youtube on other videos?

It depends on your graphics driver. Try watching full-screen, as that usually causes KZfaq to use hardware acceleration instead of software rendering.

+Stephen Clementson It's great on one level, yet having to design it around that repeatedly-reused and hence wear-and-damage-prone tape as a semi-permanent part (that couldn't be replaced separate from the expensive head assembly) was the horrible result.

NotATube One thing's for sure...I didn't have anything that could shoot video, prior to the advent of solid state memory with a capacity sufficiently large to supplant mechanical devices. And that is in spite of the fact that I was already in my mid twenties when the first ever camcorder was produced. Then unconvinced of its advantages, I'd simply purchased a point-and-shoot camera that could double as a mediocre camcorder. The results were as bizarre as they were unexpected, and resulted in a completely unpredicted, and somewhat unorthodox, use for video.

Stephen Clementson Yeah; my mid-2000s digital camera can "do" video for values of low-res and/or framerate. :-/ Could have got one with better video to be fair, but the higher-up model didn't get as good reviews as a still camera. Camcorders came out when I was about 8 or 9 and I always wanted one growing up. Now that I could get something dirt-cheap that'd smoke those mid-80s camcorders, I'm indifferent. :-/

+NotATube The strange thing is that the camcorder I like the best isn't actually a camcorder. It's a Fujifilm Bridge camera. It is a good physical shape for steady hand-held shots, has an electronic view finder, good zoom, and runs on three different types of AA cell. But it also has disadvantages, such as not having a cooling fan. It can't take HD videos longer than 29 minutes at a time, because the chips will overheat. It also shoots 1080i, rather than 1080p. Fortunately, that is backwards compatible with 1080p, but I have to convert it with Windows Movie Maker. My Canon camcorder has internal cooling, but it suffers from chromatic abberations at high zoom levels and has no viewfinder, just an LCD screen (which is awful in bright daylight). My Panasonic pistol camcorder has a limited battery capacity, and is difficult to hold steady.

Stephen Clementson My Nikon D5100 DSLR has the same issue with overheating limiting HD video times. In bright light it can also produce "stuttery" video, ironically because the shutter speed (for each individual frame) is set too short and thus doesn't give the motion blurring that's- ironically- required to give the impression of smooth movement. (This is normally recommended to be half the frame rate, i.e. for 25fps, shutter speed should be 1/50s, etc.) It'd be okay if it either chose intelligent defaults itself or offered the user proper control over the video shutter speed settings, but while there are tricks to coerce it in the right direction, that's still a half-baked, not entirely reliable solution. Not to mention that 25fps or 30fps, while okay for film, is less satisfactory for everyday video use that would be better with 50 or 60 fps anyway. Apparently some of the later Nikons offer this.

DaPajamas Yes.

Yes, onto tape.

At the same places where you can find any other used electronics from the 1990s.

VWestlife At the thrift store?

Simon Han at your local dumpster

the compaq nerd No.

+vwestlife Cool

+vwestlife It says "ruview" in the title, is it supposed to do that?

the mre nerd Yes, it's a pun on the Sony Ruvi name.

vwestlife Ok, thought so but I wasn't sure.

I know. That was a pun.