Sony Video8 Handycam CCD-M8u Test Footage (1985)

Here is some footage I shot on my Sony Video8 CCD-M8u camcorder from 1985 (date code 5D).

Released in 1985, this camcorder was one of the first Video8 camcorders that Sony released, and was one of the first "handheld" camcorders, hence the "Handycam" name. While this camcorder was very small for it's time, compared to the earlier Betamovies that Sony had, they had to sacrifice a LOT of the features that the other camcorders had. This camcorder is a record-only unit, and cannot play back it's own recordings. This unit did come with a portable Video8 VCR, the EV-C8, when it was new in 1985 however.

But it gets worse. This camera has no zoom at all, and 3 settings for manual focus. The worst thing in this camcorder, in my opinion, is that the viewfinder is a simple hole you look though, and it's not a through-the-lens optical viewfinder. What you see in the viewfinder is not at all what the CCD is actually seeing. I assume many people did not like this camcorder, but luckily by the time the Hi8 camcorders hit the market in the early 1990s more of the features came back. Sony also had another model around the time this camcorder was released, the CCD-V8, which had full playback capability and an electronic viewfinder. I have this unit as well, and I agree it's a much better camcorder than the CCD-M8.

I got this camcorder for $40 off shopgoodwill (including shipping and tax). It still works perfectly fine, and is in great condition for it's age. Surprisingly, the NP-22 battery this camcorder came with still holds somewhat of a charge, so I was able to get some outdoor shots without having to re-cell the battery. I'm guessing the battery life is about 20-30 minutes, which is not bad at all. I am not sure when the battery was manufactured, I'm not sure how long the NP-22 was in production for. The battery is a 6V, 1300mAh battery. In the future I will possibly re-cell the battery.

Also, in some of the shots there is no sound, that was because the microphone came unplugged and I forgot to plug it back in. So sorry about that. Some of the shots I did on a tripod, other ones I did just by holding the camcorder, so some shots might not be 100% stable.

Played back on Sony DCR-TRV520 Digital8 camcorder, captured using DV over Firewire. Some minor edits done using VirtualDub (direct stream copy). Deinterlaced with QTGMC to 60p, upscaled to 1080p, and encoded to H.264 with StaxRip. Other editing done in Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2018.

I did denoise the video in StaxRip, and while that got rid of some strange artifacts in the picture, it made the video look a lot softer than the original DV AVI file. Oh well. Analog video capture is a massive rabbithole.