Watch How to Revive a Dinosaur Sony Handycam

I will relate here how I revived my extinct dinosaur Sony handycams back to life.

Yesterday I was sorting through a stack of old gadgets, cellphones and point and shot cameras now considered obselete and trash.

I noticed my old Sony Handycams TRV330 and TRV308, the good old Sony handycams supporting digital 8 recordings that proved productive and worthy during its acquisition.

Ownership of the cameras urged me to buy a stack of 8mm Hi8 video casettes mostly from manufacturers that include TDK, JVC and Sony to name drop a few. It proved productive I had a lot of DV8’s filled with memories of my family.

The captured memories I already converted in digital format using a video converter and editing suite made by Roxio, which I have got an updated program now called Roxio Next, I still use today in DVD video authoring in tandem with Pinnacle Studio Ultimate, also by Roxio.

My kids use Adobe Premier Pro in their video and dvd projects.

Converting video from tape to digital was a tedious process, I have to attach the camera to the computer using an I tripple E 1394 port and compatible cable. 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple, which called it FireWire. The 1394 interface is also known by the brands i.LINK by Sony, and Lynx by Texas Instruments.

I have to play the tape on the camera and watch the video on the computer screen running the converter suite. Sometimes, a one hour tape contain events that are separate I have to stop the conversion to allow creation of a new digital file. That was so stoneage compared to current digital video cams now that record footage in digital format already using memory card.

I retired the cameras one after another after they failed to be of good use. Every time I attempt to record, screens would display a message of “Error Code 31:20 or Error Code 31:23. Despite cleaning the rotating drums, yes they are mechanical, with countless of many attempts, the efforts were useless.

So I placed it back to its original packaging, with the camera bags and accessories.

Fast forward yesterday, when I saw both in the boxes I was tempted to check and play with it even as I know they are to be disposed already. The same error message would display still.

I went to my work station and searched for the online answer for the fix on what to do so the error message would go away.

A website with plenty of comments from users with the same complaint gave me the correct and final solution. The article was written in 2005. Some of the comments were from people who were desperate to have their camera work again and spent a good sum of money by bringing it to a camera repair shop.

But fortunate for many of the inquirers that time based on the website, one user posted that he made his camera work by tapping hard for a couple of times the sides of the camera. The forum got positive feedback from its users, confirming that the quick fix did worked.

So now, holding my old non working handycam, I whackedd the sides a few times. I plugged the cameras one at a time to power source, turned on the button to camera record option and there you go, error message was gone and with the screen only showing I have to input correct date, etc. What a quick, instant solution to wake up my dinosaur handycams which has been sleeping for ten years! why have I not Googled it before?

I have already tested if the camera will record and it did!

Now I’m putting back to good use the cameras for some specific and special projects since it can record video using its night shot and super night shot features. A plus for filming projects even without proper lighting or no benefit of light at all.

They will join with my current Canon EOS Rebel T3i, a GoPro and an aging Sony handycam HDR CX-100

This is all I can share about these cameras.

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