I just did exactly that about an hour ago hahahaha Ok but I was sitting outside at a cafe with a bmpcc og in a 15lbs rig with matte box, external monitor and everything like a total hipster douchebag 🤣
@@uhuhno6441 If went outside in public with that rig, I could be sure I'd get a number of people coming up to me asking if I was recording footage for the news as that has happened to me multiple times in the past when I have taken my cameras, shotgun mic, audio recorder and tripod out to get videos in different places.
Glad you got to visit NYC. In the 1970s I was a filmmaker in double 8 and super 8 silent formats. But vid cams were too rich for my blood. Now I have this smart fone .. Always enjoy your video posts.
Great video! I had the same JVC MiniDV camcorder you have and really enjoyed it at the time. However, I ran into the same problems trying to get the video from the tapes onto my PC. Unfortunately, i only had the ability to use the video-S output option available to me, so the video quality never was even close to the quality on the original tapes. Thanks for the great memories and how you got into video editing and RU-vid! Cheers!
Impressive that it films in widescreen too. The video has a nice "home video" quality that will probably be popular in 20 years as a funny effect in the 16K VR Metaverse.
What a wonderful treasure to share with us! This takes me back to the first Cannon camera I ever owned, which I still have. I also purchased a iMac which I also still own and spent many fond hours editing in iMovie. Thanks Matt, this was nostalgic and interesting, like a documentary of your origins juxtaposed with the birth of digital home video recording. Superb!
Reason for the 1MP sensor was that anti shake compensation, with the camera scanning the entire frame, and then using a moving crop per frame to do the stabilising.Of course great audio, Sony always was at the forefront of getting good quality audio at low cost, and ensuring the video formats they were involved in always had good audio. Comes as part of also being the largest maker of microphones as well, and still a big player, even if you never see the brand name of the microphone capsule itself.
I would have loved playing around with one of those as a kid. My father went with one of Sony's shoe sized camcorders that took Hi8 tapes. Ours sat at home a lot. Lots of shaky footage of visiting family and friends. I stuck with Sony when I finally bought a new phone this year. I'm still amazed by how far their cameras has come just in my lifetime. I also like how they stuck with Zeiss lenses.
The image quality looks great for the time (early 2000's). I was using a digital camera (around $100) that recorded video clips to an sd card, image quality was not nearly as good and only a couple minutes long (which was about as long as the AA batteries lasted, too).
Funny thing, i think smartphones got their foot in the door so to say by being pretty diminutive in size, to where they were not larger than any other phone, and more cumbersome because you had to charge them daily and sometimes top them up during lunch break, but they'd offer so much more capability! Indeed my first smartphone was the Huawei Ideos X3, which with its 3.2" LCD and a sleek egg-like shell didn't seem like a smartphone at all. Typical sizes back in the day were around 3.5", so not even all that much larger. There was a strong competition to make them thinner and lighter as well, eventually reaching barely above 6mm. There were other similar devices before, Windows CE handhelds with phone feature, but they weren't as small and slick as smartphones as they emerged around 2010, they often had kickout or slideout keyboards, being much more designed with productivity in mind, and they were thick. Then they gradually got bigger and nowadays people typically have a 6.5" brick on them, exceeding 200g in weight, a EU standard pack of butter, and getting effectively quite thick with straps and pop sockets attached to the back of the protective case, which became close to a necessity. Because people really wanted more power and more capability and for the battery to last a couple days as well. Back in the day when this came out my only video device was a Powershot G2. I never shot any video on it, because it looked absolutely dreadful. It does make some spectacularly pretty still pictures though, i can still use it. This looks nice, the footage from this MicroMV actually looks nice. Also love the anamorphic widescreen feature, in spite of subsequent editing woes. Wonder how Sanyo Xacti of the era fares in comparison, as i was thinking about those back in the day. Xacti continued until 2010, you might want to check them out for ergonomics. Unfortunately they weren't continued, that's 1080p era, nowadays you'd want a 4k one with high framerate options like 120Hz and up at lower resolutions. Maybe we should poke Sanyo on this, worth a shot?
It reminds me of my Panasonic HX-DC1 1080p sd card card camcorder. The same pistol type camera with a 12mp still function. Great in it's day but a little bit pants now. Still have it though.
While Sony the company probably won't look back on MicroMV with warm fuzzy feelings, I can assure you that the engineers who solved the problems required to realise it would be thrilled to know that you appreciated their work. I still get emails thanking me for some of the stuff I worked on decades ago, and it is one of the most wonderful things.
Hands down, one of the best Techmoan videos ever. There is something about *mechanical* miniaturisation that can still generate awe, the tolerances in that cassette mechanism must have been incredible. The fact that it still works two decades later - presumably without service - also impresses. I think another reason this format failed was because flash storage got very cheap, very quickly. People might forget that when the iPod mini was introduced, Steve Jobs' speech bemoaned the flash based competition, yet 18 months later he was asking "ever wonder what this pocket is for?" and pulling out an iPod nano. Finally - in a nice irony, the first Techmoan video I ever watched was about Sony Elcaset. Another technologically superior failed format - but without it, I wouldn't subscribe to this channel.
Ah, Microdrives. That 1" 1gb spinning hard drive in the early iPods was also available as a thing for CF-card-based cameras, we had a couple at the newspaper I shot for at the turn of the century. They were not well-regarded, basically only to be used if you were going out into the wilderness -- in practice, we used a 256mb CF card and just found time to get to the office and dump it to the computer between assignments (yes, we had one or two per camera, that's how expensive flash cards were back then that made tiny HDDs a thing).
@@oikos_9000 "Cyberpunk" is a great way to put it, future versions of 80s tech are so much more aesthetically pleasing than the iPhoneification of everything these days.
I absolutely loved MiniDV myself and did lots of cool stuff with it, but it was definitely fragile. A couple cameras and a deck all failed. And unlike TechMoan I suck at repair
This was one of those videos where you feel like you're in a friend's living room while he tells you a story of something interesting. One of the best videos in the channel.
It's Sony, the lineage would be U-Matic, Betamax/Betacam, Video8, MiniDV, microMV. You could also see the digital compressed video from D1 (Sony, uncompressed), Digital Betacam (Intra-frame compression, like DV), and Betacam SX (MPEG-2).
Although I have little interest in consumer camcorders I also feel this was one of your best videos and well worth the wait. As you touched on each phase of your serendipitous path to becoming an accidental RU-vid creator I started to remember portions of other videos where you had alluded to this journey. Thank you.
Late 90's/early 00's was such a high point for Sony consumer electronics, for ergonomics, design, and user interfaces. Thanks for all your memory lane videos! 🙂
I still have my Sony CMT-MD1 micro system from the late 90s and Sony camcorder from the early 00s - both too beautiful to get rid of but yeah they sure went downhill design wise as we moved into the 21st Century which is odd seeing they were the cutting edge in aesthetics for decades. I remember when they unveiled the Playstation 3 and thought it was one of the ugliest pieces of technology I'd ever seen.
@@MichaelPybus Yeah, typically anything minidisc related was a winner - still regret selling my MD-R90 walkman to buy the hard drive walkman (A3000). Gave up a lovely lightweight mechanical product to get something nice looking but heavy and with awful software 😭
There is a point beyond which Sony management begin to look about as incompetent as British Leyland did here in the UK. I have a DCR-PC9 Mini DV camcorder somewhere. Beautiful well engineered machine and very small for its time. 📹
Imagine if someone told you 20 years ago that the vacation footage you were shooting would be played for an audience of 1 million+ … what a strange world…
It really is amazing to think of how camcorders have evolved over the years. From a huge thing that rested on your shoulder, to a small handheld digital tape unit, to what we have now. Back in the late 90's and early 2000's would we ever imagine that in 20 years time we would all be walking round with a device always in our pocket capable of recording hours of cinema quality video that could be instantly shared with people around the world on that same device. Then to think that most of that high tech capability would be used to shoot cat videos in a vertical format.
Same! It’s rather lovely to see the clips. Maybe it’s just nostalgia but seeing the shots of his holiday made my heart swell a little. I think I miss it!
This is why I love your channel. You bring back memories of long forgotten technology. These days we take it all for granted. Our phones do everything for us. I miss the days when you could look forward to the next new thing in technology. I can't thing of one tech item I got existed over being released in the last 5 years. Living with tech through the 80s, 90s and early 2000s makes you realise just how much we moved on in a short time. Keep doing what you are doing. Thank you 😊
The last cassette "walkman" I owned was an Aiwa one with electronic buttons, pressing play or rewind and seeing the device do it electronically instead of mechanically was magical. That's what I was thinking when you were putting that little tape in. I know it's not a big deal but I really do enjoy that kind of thing.
My last portable cassette player was also an electronic controlled Aiwa. I should still have it. I might make a mixed tape and bring it to the gym if it still works.
Yup. My JVC CXF5K was pure magic: Auto reverse, one AA battery, and not much bigger than the tape it held. I wish I still had it, but it got stolen in high school and the CXF7 I replaced it with (same guts in a restyled and slightly chunkier case) never looked or felt as magical.
You are my favourite time travel machine, brother. Your hypnotic voice and your knowledge about what you talk about is like going back to school, only that it's on subjects we all love and not algebra 😄. You are an oasis for us Gen Xs! Please never give up. You remind us all (Gen xs) that life still has some good things to remember and enjoy about those wonderful days and the tech available then. Big cheers from Guatemala, in Central America.
Sat here in New York watching this video and am genuinely impressed with the quality of this camera from almost 20 years ago. Some great archive footage of the great city!
It's almost spooky how ephemeral the footage is. All of these people living life and not really aware he was filming, intersecting for a moment of time and then probably never again. I'm really glad he shared so much footage.
even by today video image quality standards, those MV tape footage aren't that bad really ... also, we see some really high quality upscaled video imagery in really amazing ways, converted into 4K for example with very little quality loss!
Thanks so much for sharing the background, it's great! I was a Hi-8 user back in the day and just always loved that old Sony feel and know exactly what you mean about the way that zoom control feels. I wish things were still made in that way.
As well as being a good story, I really like your 2004 US footage - I went to New York for the first and only time in 2005 so that helps bring my photos to life. I had stopped using a camcorder at that point as I was worried I was spending too much time filming and not enough enjoying the moment, so I didn't have anything between VHS-C and SD card when I changed my mind - so it's fascinating to hear about these optimised mini tape formats.
The thing you said about progress not always being progress really resonates with me today. I ran across my first smartphone, an OG Motorola Droid, in the drawer where it's rested ever since it was retired, and was reminded of how much nicer it was to use than pretty much any of its replacements. Sure, the screen is microscopic by today's standards (as are, more metaphorically, the processing power and battery life), but IMO it had the best user experience _and_ the best accessory ecosystem of any Android smartphone... well, basically ever, and I miss it.
Feel the same way. My first smartphone was a Galaxy Nexus, a year or so after it came out so not too expensive. But it was fast enough, had enough storage. Big thing I miss on modern smartphones is being able to load most of an app to a micro SD card, with just the launcher left on built in memory. And my favorite cars were my Saturn sc2 and my 84 town car.
What really was a negative development in mobile technology was the pervasive aspect of social media. When phones were for making phone calls and sending text messages to people you know, they were good and useful. I agree that additions of GPS functionality were good, like Verizon's Navigator, and then later Google Maps. It's when we started using the phones for bad things that should have given us all pause to consider what we were doing. Take Twitter, for example. it's like sending a text message to the entire world... And the world apparently is filled with entitled assholes that want to constantly fight with someone. 🤣 Bringing smartphones back to personal interaction only would make the world a better place.
@@michaelf.2449 I had one, and I loved it. They were great. They were also more durable than I expected. A friend of mine drove over his with a trailer truck (not on purpose) and the thing worked afterwards. 🤣
I loved this video. Seeing your journey from walking into a store and buying a camcorder to editing videos today was very enjoyable. They really don't make camcorders like that anymore. Even though camera quality is top notch nowadays, there's something cool about having a dedicated device for filming videos.
Very personal video from you Matt! We all appreciate for sure the story in it but more than that... you talk to us like you are having a dialog with a very good friend. Thank you as always!!
I was introduced to Vegas way back at Version-4. I was skeptical but wound up falling in love with it quite quickly. It handled widescreen video quite well (you just have to tell the software you're using widescreen), though I was using MiniDV at the time so maybe that makes a difference. Any way, I'm currently using V 18 and all other editors feel very frustrating by comparison. This is coming from a guy who was forced to use Premiere and Final Cut for his 8-year stint in broadcast television.
Ha first camcorder we ever used took a full sized VHS tape 😂 We rented it from a local shop and took it on a football tour with us. It weighed a ton, was fantastic though & a great laugh to use cos it was such a novelty at the time 😂
re: progress in every direction, I agree; it's one of the causes of hesitation I have buying a new car.. everything being touch panels seems a significant backwards step compared to the muscle memory and tactile feedback available when reaching for a dial to change the temperature, or pressing the power knob to turn off a car stereo. loved the video. thanks.
That's amazing that all those adaptors strung together actually work and work 100% for you, I wish I had such luck getting outdated equipment to talk to modern equipment! I still have an old Compaq LTE Lite 25c laptop that I've got other similar Compaq laptops in the past to keep it going with spares, I've even replaced the 3.5 inch floppy drive belt twice. But the speed of the PC and the old M$ DOS 3.1 OS is the only platform my old equipment will still work with. Even DOS in Windows 7 will not work. I have another project coming up very soon and I only pray that the old Compaq LTE Lite 25c laptop will still boot up and the serial port still works, the serial port is the only interface my old kit talks to at 9k6,N,8,1 Thank you for the fantastic video on the old recorders and how you have managed to still today get to read the tapes and get the "footage" into a modern format you can use on a modern PC, it is quite something to be proud of, IMHO!
Co-incidentally, I'm currently in the process of transferring a drawer-full of MiniDV tapes. I worked in TV and corporate video production back in the late 90s and early 2000s and one of the projects I created a video for was celebrating its 20th anniversary and wanted a HD upscaled version of the original video for the celebration. All of my original camera and editing masters have sat un-touched in a box in a filing cabinet drawer since I switch to HD production. The email about the 20th anniversary project lead me to borrowing my brother's DV camera (mine died and was thrown out two house moves ago) and cobbling together a process using a generic firewire card and some *VERY* dodgy drivers that still worked on Windows 10 to capture the digital video in a series of AVI (!) files. I was then able to transfer them to my Mac editing system and use a combination of Hybrid AI deinterlacing and Topaz AI upscaling to create 1080p ProRes files that I could import into DaVinci Resolve (my editor of choice) and colour-correct and clean up the audio for the final release. The project made me realise that with data costs being so low today, it would only cost me a little bit of time to transfer all of the original tapes while I still have the opportunity. I don't know if they will ever be of any use, but all I really have to do is press play, let the capture software (ScenealyzerLive) capture the video and split it into scenes and back up the captured video to my NAS and rinse and repeat 60 minutes later.
Now's the time to save any MiniDV you have. I transferred our circa 2002-2006 tapes in 2020, and dropouts were starting. Some tapes required a re-read or two.
Oh man, Scenalyzer. I haven’t thought about that program in a long time. That’s what I used for my own Firewire video captures from a Canopus analog to digital converter. (It conveniently removed Macrovision, so I’ve been able to archive quite a few old movies that have never been released on DVD or Blu-ray.)
This video may actually end up being helpful for me at some point. If I run into MicroMV (which I might), I now know that I can easily transfer video with iMovie '08 - which for me isn't even a little bit of a challenge, I can grab an old MacBook Pro off the stack and use it to do the transfer.
Advertise it as a service there will be loads of sentimental rich people who have these tapes lying around and probably you will be the only horse in the race.
@@thedave7760 Perhaps I should. I was only thinking of the possibility of the occasional one-off client who had the camcorder, but I think I'll look into picking one up myself and offer it on my website. Thanks!
@@thedave7760 I offered a service to transfer MicroMV tapes but had few takers. Most people buy a refurbished MicroMV camcorder from me and do their own transfers.
I just found him on one of these tapes as I was transferring it - I don’t remember recording this, but I thought it was a good way to show how big some of those Sharp viewcam camcorders got, they definitely didn't fit in a pocket - not even one in a white jumpsuit. It also shows what other camcorders your typical person in the street was using at the time I had my DCR-IP1 (j/k)
23:23 That’s funny. I love scriptwriting and research, but the video editing can be such a pain. It’s interesting how different creators on YT enjoy different parts of the process. Edit: 27:37 Whoa, Mat coming with some dope, retro 2000-era Universal Studios Orlando clips. I wonder if he’s got some early Islands of Adventure clips in there. 😮
No doubt Mat that Sony learned a lot from the DAT era, where they really did push the boundaries of mechanical miniaturisation. Your footage is quite good given I too started with MiniDV and found it excellent then, but now the footage is quite terrible. I did the DVD route as well, so it’s time to recapture my tapes and store them digitally!!! As usual, great video.
"They all dropped more frames than a drunken snooker player" hahaha 😂🤣 I enjoy all your videos, but this one in particular I must say. Sony used to make incredible products, top technology really, whether consumer or professional. Maybe not so much nowadays when pretty much everything is a computer... times change. Anyways, thanks again for producing such interesting and enjoyable content!
Well, this morning I didn't know that MicroMV existed. Tonight, I am very grateful that it did, because without it, I wouldn't have one of my favorite RU-vid channels.
@@_Super_Hans_ I didn’t like my own comment - someone else must have but since you mentioned it, I’ll go and like it now anyway… I’ll like yours too because I’m a nice chap.
Little bit of in-fill on the data chip shown at 30:45 - This looks virtually identical (But of course physically smaller) to the RF chips used for similar purposes in Ultrium LTO data cartridges, a standard that emerged around 2006 and which Sony was involved in the development of. 🛠 If you look very carefully at 30:21 you can _just_ see the chip standing on end next to Mats' thumb, and the chips used in Ultrium cartridges occupy the same position (Opposite end from the write protect switch) as shown here. 📼↙😇 Many thanks for another awesome video, Mat...And not only for demonstrating yet another piece of brilliant technology, but also for detailing the steps which started at home video recordings and ended in one of the most successful channels on RU-vid! 🎞🏆👍
It's incredible to think just how many things had to occur in a series of events to lead us to where we are today. Glad you decided to go shopping that morning! Is there any chance we can see a full video of your NYC travel footage? Quite a bit has changed since then, and it's always fun to look back at what the city was.
Totally agree, I went with the Canon XL-1 instead of the smaller Sony stuff. I used it here and there, but everyone thought I was the media so I stopped using it in public. Amazingly the XL-1 was the last camcorder I ever bought.
This is a great reminder of how much we take modern image stabilization for granted -- and it hasn't even been around that long. That said, the MV did a pretty nice job.
Hello, I like watching your videos, but sometimes I watch them in the evening and I end up falling asleep. The sudden changes in volume wake me up and I end up unable to fall asleep again until very late. Can you please try to make the volume more even across the video?
Great vid Mat, thanks. Great to see you smiling again 😊Never heard of this format, fascinating to see how small they managed to get with tape formats. Is this the smallest ever?
@@Techmoan Years ago I worked for a UK importer who brought in fancy electronics goods (portable 5" TV, Air-Band Radios and so on) from Asia including a video camera that recorded onto AUDIO CASSETTES. The tape ran very fast, a C90 would give about 5 minutes of poor quality B&W video. It was aimed at the little-uns and as far as I know it never went on sale. The sound of a C90 belting through the mech made too much noise.
29:00 that mechanism is like... very Japanese sci-fi feels. Incredibly intricate tiny parts like clocks. Yea, it really feels magical to have such "physical" interactions, totally different from what we have today that are all static.
It came with a controller too?! Damn I want one. Still today lol. I graduated high school in 1999 so the early 2000s was when I first got into buying actual stuff and this definitely would’ve been on my list. My Sony MiniDisc was my go to audio format. I love Sony. Thanks for sharing this.
Filmed a lot of my daughter's jump lessons and competitions (aboard a horse of course) with a similar model of a Sony. Loved it. Didn't need a lot of space for extra tapes and batteries - generally didn't need to bring them, in fact. (Note: There was no scoffing on my part.) (Another note: Adobe Premiere Pro did well with the tape's format, learned to love that tool. My PC has a built-in Firewire connection making transfer very simple.)
One of the best parts of a Saturday - watching Techmoan. This was a good one as others have said I loved the story of your journey. I found that footage still looks just fine by the way. This one ticked all the boxes
It's crazy how the early 2000s look more and more like the 1990s which by now are pretty much indistinguishable from the 1980s. Thanks for the video Mat, it's great to have you around.
I think the 1990s is still highly distinguishable from the 1980s. The 90s and early 2000 onwards are so much more drab in comparison to the 70s and 80s, like the difference between the 70s and 90s is so much bigger than the difference between 2000 and 2022 if you were to compare some random on the street filming.
Very interesting, I had VHS camera and tapes. I recorded the VHS to DVD recorder and then copied the DVD to pc hard drive. Takes forever and quality is awful.
Well....that is a new one on me! I have worked in AV retail for 30 years this month and it is the first I have heard of it! You learn something new everyday!
New subscriber here. I love all niche audio/video stuff you unearth and show! Being born in 64 and started reading audiophile magazines in the 70s, you have really hit a great subject. Keep up the great content and , Thank You!
Really enjoy your videos Mat. You not only talk about the old tech, but you also tell us about how that tech has impacted your life, which is something a lot of other youtubers who just focus on the technology seem to miss. I'm really glad you bought that MicroMV camera at Sainsbury's back in the day!
This was one of my favorite videos of yours. Informative, personal, and a trip down memory lane for myself as well. The whole thing felt like we were just sitting in a pub shooting the breeze. Thanks so much for this. Cheers! 🍻
Very interesting to both see your journey and as a reminder of video in the noughties. Also a great reminder of how hit-and-miss Sony can be with their products.
To be honest I really love the video aesthetics of the early to mid 2000's, regardless of their crappy resolution and quality by today's standard. I could watch those recordings for hours, even if its just random street scenes or birds in a park. I don't know how to describe it better, but to me they have a certain "dreamyness" to it, like a promise of things to come that came very differently...
Hahaha, I remember seeing that giant green hand in NYC when we went to see the Lion King on Broadway when I was 9! I didn't remember anything else, though, so I didn't think I'd EVER get context for something so obscure! Best video yet, Tech!
I never got micoMV, but I did use an HDV camcorder, which was 1080i HD on MiniDV using MPEG2. I used HDVSplit to transfer the tapes to PC. Looking it up, HDVSplit does work for microMV as well, although one review mentions some dropped frames. The reviewer also mentioned that they transferred from IP1 using Pinnacle Studio Deluxe version 10 without dropped frames. HDVSplit can also come in handy after transfer, since if your video software transferred a tape over as one massive transport stream instead of splitting it up into multiple clips, HDVSplit can, well, split that file back into the individual clips, like DVdate does for MiniDV transfers. Regarding dropped frames, I've always been a bit miffed that the transfer software all seems to just cut out the dropped frames and smash all the remaining frames together, instead of leaving the dropped frames in as blank. A nice video recovery program would be something that could take an "image" of a tape, including the padding for missing frames, then you could produce multiple "images" of a tape by transferring it multiple times, and then merging them together, adding in the frames that one transfer captured that the other transfer attempt missed. Also, regarding dropped frames and transferring tapes before your camcorder died, I had one MiniDV camcorder die on me, and I tried using a different MiniDV camcorder for transferring videos. This worked fine for the tapes recorded in SD mode, but the LP mode tapes were dropping frames left and right. I ended up buying another camcorder of the exact same brand/model as the original, and the LP mode tapes worked a lot better in that, suggesting LP mode recording wasn't as standard across models as one would hope. There were still one or two tapes that had too many dropped frames for a firewire transfer to PC to be usable, so I ended up doing a video capture of those via the video out on the camcorder, as the camcorder's error correction and video processing corrected or "smoothed out" any dropped frames to produce a watchable video/audio feed.
Once again, another wonder episode from Techmoan. While I didn’t get that particular format back in the early ’00s, I remember my first foray into digital video recording was through the Cannon Sureshot. The very idea of being able to record video on a SD card was absolutely fascinating to my father and I. He was born in 1950, so he grew up starting with the 8mm format through vhs camcorders to mini-vhs to finally SD video via the Cannon Sureshot. Sadly, he suffered a massive stroke/heart attack in early ‘11 and was bedridden, half paralyzed, and brain damaged for the remaining six years of his life. I remember when I got my first Smartphone in ‘15 (a Nokia 530 Windows Phone). I was quite happy that I could not only record digital video, but easily upload these videos on RU-vid. I only wish my father could appreciate it now.
In general I like these videos. This one in particular was really spot on. I was using the Hi-8 and MiniDV when it came out expencive cameras and it is hard to use the material today but still. Was top of the line then and fun as hell to run around with those smaller things.
I fell in love with SVHS as it was going away. I have since shot live footage on a mac tablets. Hate it there needs to be a blue tooth handle you can strap a tablet to. Holding up what is basically a picture frame is dumb ergonomics. That was what you were hitting on in your video. The new device had a mic where your finger wants to go. Moving the zoom moves the whole camera. When I first started taking pics on smartphones I pushed too hard and nearly pushed the thing out of my fingers. I have entertained putting together a shoulder platform to shoot video from. 3D printed to hold my main video device with a finger tightened screw and a place to mount a shotgun mic or omni mic.
It really is amazing to think how much stuff became completely obsolete when flash memory really started scaling up in storage capacity and USB really started scaling up in transfer speed. Cassettepunk is going to be the next retro-future fad. That Sony MicroMV camcorder you got is a beautiful item. I love the those late-90s/early-2000s bead-blasted aluminum casings on electronic devices. My smartphone is vastly more useful but doesn't look half as good.
Another brilliant slice of Techmoan on a Saturday morn. I’ve still got all my old DV cassettes so it’s remind me to get on with a job I keep putting off. Procrastination thieving time and all that 😂
I had a job repairing Sony Camcorders and digital cameras. It was a lot of fun. I bought myself a broken microMV camcorder off ebay and fixed it myself. I can tell you from experience that rebuilding the tape mechanism on this model requires a steady hand, a magnification device, and tweezers. I was successful though. I came across this during one of my recent basement expeditions. Now I want to dig it out and see if I can bring it back to life again!
Back in late 1990s I was using miniDV with the Sony DCRTRV900; my issue when transferring that old footage around 2018 was too much dropout on the tapes … sadly tape doesn’t last
I bought two of the vertical format Sony camcorders and mounted them side by side in order to make stereoscopic 3D videos. (They were synchronised through the firewire port with a little device from the US).
We were also on Voyager Of The Seas, but it was in 2012. That looks like a great holiday. By the way, you are dismissive of your early camera work - but I really like it. It has a certain charm, much like my own non-professional efforts.
It's lovely when you can track a massive life change to a single moment in time. I have a couple of those moments and it's always a pleasure just to think how lucky one is for that change (when it's good, obviously). Thanks for the story! Can't understand how anyone subscribe to this channel would complain about you telling it!
