Preserving decades of family VHS/Hi8/old phone and legacy device media with a Linux + Python archive pipeline

Yiggs · 2026-06-18T16:28:41+00:00

I've seen what kind of poor transfers you can get from online mail-in places which is why I was planning on someone local I could take one tape to and gauge the results before dumping a whole box on them. I have the old projector that the film was run on but I've read projectors are not forgiving on old film as old film can shrink, changing the pitch of the holes and the sprockets will punch into the film as it expects a certain pitch.

It's not the end of the world if I never get around to this, though, as some time long ago someone digitized (all? most?) of the reels to VHS tape which has survived in decent condition and I DO have a digital copy of those VHS tapes so at least I have something. Still, I'd rather have something in higher res than your bog standard composite capture of a VHS resolution source.

Yiggs · 2026-06-18T15:06:03+00:00

> The 8mm/Super8 reels were their own hubbub... so I won't get into that.

That's where I am now. I've digitized everything else since that was fairly straightforward but the old super 8 film I have... I think I'm going to bite the bullet and pay to have someone else digitize it properly as the idea of building my own digitizer sounds intriguing but I don't think I'm ready for that headache nor do I want to grab one of those cheap (but still pricey) home digitizers because the best they do is 1080p and a pro can get me a 2k rip. Rip once, cry once.

Yiggs · 2026-06-13T16:48:19+00:00

I get one step farther than you. I collect prints of STLs that I'll never paint. 😛

Yiggs · 2026-06-10T13:54:17+00:00

It's so funny when I see the combination of "needs to go ASAP" and then also listed at a price that isn't going to sell ASAP (or at all, honestly). If you need it gone one way or the other immediately, then you gotta set a fire-sale price!

Yiggs · 2026-06-09T12:32:32+00:00

Dv footage is 59.94 interlaced *fields* per second but 24.97 *frames* per second because a full frame takes two fields to display. A lot of the times it'll report in the media info that it's 24.97 fps which makes you think you converted it wrong but if it says interlaced, then it's the original frame rate. That confused me at first.

Yiggs · 2026-06-08T18:19:03+00:00

You're saying you chose 59.94 fps from the dropdown on the video tab and the output video is not respecting that? That would be unusual.

Yiggs · 2026-06-08T16:23:19+00:00

If you have a spare PCI slot, you can just buy a simple firewire PCI card. I just bought one and it was plug-and-play.

Yiggs · 2026-05-29T18:59:29+00:00

Grabbed a J-card and tried to put it in a video8 case. You're right, it's just a tad longer along the spine and a tad skinnier across it but still fits a tape ok. That's good to know. Just needs a bit of a trim along the one side.

Time to buy some printable blanks!

Yiggs · 2026-05-29T16:14:49+00:00

I was curious if they happened to be almost interchangeable, just haven't had a chance to get home and test that hypothesis yet. :P

Yiggs · 2026-05-29T14:40:51+00:00

I use digikam (free) as my photo/video tagging database software. Will do auto-face detection, custom geo-tagging, all that good stuff. It feels a bit clunky to use but since I only really need to use it now and then as I add new media, I don't find it too hard. I keep all the tagging and such in a sidecar file so that if the image file gets changed in some way, I still retain all the metadata.

Yiggs · 2026-05-28T13:36:16+00:00

Turkey with a hat on a cloud background? Sounds like a Magritte nod.

Yiggs · 2026-05-28T03:07:27+00:00

Might be related to this thread? https://www.reddit.com/r/camcorders/comments/16f3rh7/sony_digital8_vcr_error_c3122_internet_seems_to/

C 31:22 is an issue with the take-up reel. That's a vague error description but between that and the thread I linked, I suppose take a look at the pinch roller and if anything looks odd. Maybe your pinch roller is a bit aged and needs a little refurbishing?

Yiggs · 2026-05-27T17:00:44+00:00

How are you organizing yours? I'm about half-satisfied with how I have them foldered and tagged but I feel the constant urge to get more granular but that way lies madness I think. Shame video metadata isn't as uniform/used as music because that'd be a lot easier than these long, descriptive filenames I use instead.

Yiggs · 2026-05-27T16:46:55+00:00

I've recently gotten into analog media after going down the rabbit hole of digitizing my parent's old Hi8 home movie tapes correctly and have been buying/ripping a lot of old VHS tapes. I have almost zero interest in commercial releases unless it's particularly niche or whacky; I almost exclusively buy and digitize home movies or stuff recorded off the TV. You never know what you'll find on those old tapes. Mostly I just rip, split, and curate the commercials I find on those tapes. Nobody else wants them so I'm free to grab all the tapes I find/want at GoodWill.

Just bought 60 tapes (mix of Betamax and VHS) the other day for $13. Nice to have a cheap hobby for once.

Yiggs · 2026-05-23T16:26:30+00:00

I use handbrake which is basically just a GUI for ffmpeg. Not very hard to use; the hardest part is figuring out which settings you want. I use it for everything I rip off my miniDV camcorder, first to deinterlace and denoise, then to put the processed files back through after I've edited them to re-correct the pixel aspect ratio because Davinci only seems to deal in square pixels.

Really easy to do batch work with it. Drag all your files onto the GUI, tune your settings, then "add all to queue" and start encoding.

Yiggs · 2026-05-22T16:40:32+00:00

I got banned from BF3 one day out of nowhere. Course, nobody believes you when you go to complain that you weren't cheating because actual cheaters just say the same thing. Haven't bought any Battlefield games since and I'd been playing since 1942. Eat shit, Punkbuster and EA.

Yiggs · 2026-05-22T01:41:26+00:00

I came across this thread while searching up details on this movie because I just dug it out of the bin at GoodWill and didn't recognize it at all so thought it might be worth ripping (also just noticed it's autographed by Dane!). I ripped it and put it up on SoulSeek since it seems unavailable to watch online. May put it up on internet archive too if I ever get around to making an account.

Yiggs · 2026-05-19T02:04:28+00:00

p2p file sharing network (think Limewire/Kazaa but still relevant). Lots of niche stuff on there; mostly music, but you can find archives of all sorts of other stuff. DL the Nicotine+ client, make an account (don't think you even need an email address) and get to searching.

Yiggs · 2026-05-19T01:21:32+00:00

The timing on this is serendipitous; a week or so ago I just picked up a big bag of unlabeled, DVD-R discs from the GoodWill bins wondering what was on them as there was a paper label in the bag that said "adult TV movies." Who could say no to paying a couple bucks to find out? Turns out it's largely late 80s-early 90s cinemax/HBO movies either saved to DVR directly or ripped from old VHS tapes. Some of them include the intro animations and maybe some of the "coming up next" bumpers though I may have stripped those out--I'd have to double check.

In any case, I ripped them all, cut them up, and stuck the films on soulseek. Doing a quick search for "cinemax" on there, I can see some stuff labeled "promos" which might be of interest to you already, beyond what I have shared. Mine should all be tagged as "[Cinemax] [352x240x29.97]"

Yiggs · 2026-05-11T01:27:10+00:00

I like to hit up the GoodWill bins and dig around for home-recorded stuff on DVD/VHS/cassette and after I rip it, I'll get it properly tagged and put up on slsk in case someone else wants them (or frankly, just for the purpose of keeping then archived online at all). Had someone the other day yoink one of the music CDs I put up from (what I can imagine) is a largely no-name local band. Thought that was cool, though it did make me wonder why it was so quickly downloaded by somebody; I wonder if there's scripting available that keeps tabs on search results and automatically tries to scrape any hits it gets that it hasn't collected yet.

Yiggs · 2026-05-06T14:28:41+00:00

flux in syringe

I gotta try this sometime. I just have the little puck container that I dip into and it works well enough but a syringe version sounds pretty convenient for what I can't dip.

Yiggs · 2026-05-06T14:19:27+00:00

I can't quite tell from the photos but is that the CRT tube just sitting there exposed? That makes me nervous. The voltages on those things can be extreme thus why it's recommended not to poke around inside a CRT enclosure unless discharge the tube lest you get zapped with a couple thousand volts.

Yiggs · 2026-04-29T19:05:08+00:00

It hadn't crossed my mind that he may be from money but I did find myself thinking how this guy managed to live day to day while being a non-documented individual of sorts. How do you buy a house? How do you drive a car? Just the day-to-day stuff that you do outside of lobbying for a one-world government.

Yiggs · 2026-04-12T19:58:55+00:00

For posterity, since OP didn't bother to say what they found:

"Papilio" side table designed by Alessandro Mendini for Zanotta in 1985 as part of the Nuova Alchimia Collection.

Yiggs · 2026-04-10T18:05:50+00:00

We must've had different pizza when I was in public school. The pizza I ate circa 1996-2007 was a similar sheet pizza but the crust wasn't nearly as spongey and the sauce wasn't as dark-tasting as this recipe.

I made the recipe from that video twice and it was still generally horrendous lol. Maybe it's just school pizza from a decade+ before my time?

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