I do love that this is an area of such active development. But I'm curious to see what the artifact simulation crowd thinks of it. I most often encounter them as shaders for emulators and such, but of course this kind of structure degradation of a pristine video is also in high demand these days for video production. Producers want that 90s-camcorder look but crews can't actually use the clunky 90s-camcorder hardware and formats.
I'm actually surprised there isn't much of a scene for authentic camcorder footage - directors love to bust out real black and white film cameras for stuff?
Film is a fun, interesting, authentic, and useful medium for filmmakers, and there are established workflows for it. A camcorder writing interlaced video to miniDV may have its charms (I still have a great old Panasonic 3CCD one) but as a filmmaking tool it would be really inconvenient. Shooting in an ordinary digital workflow and adding the effect later is a no brainer production-wise.
That said, I would not be surprised to see camcorders, DV or VHS or whatever, rise up as a Polaroid-like alternative to smartphone cameras! Old digital point and shoots are already popular that way.
In 2009, I recorded a video of the after effects of a torrential downpour in Toronto on a Sony HDV camera. I also called up a few news stations to see if I could sell it.
I ended up reaching CFTO (CTV Toronto), and took the footage over to Channel 9 Court. What happened next took me by complete surprise.
The flagship station of a national network had no deck in the building that would play HDV mini DV tapes. I hadn’t brought my camcorder or my MBP either, so I couldn't quickly convert it into a format that they could use.
I ended up going home, and exporting via FCP and burning onto a DVD. It worked, I got to see the inside of a news station and I got $135 for it. The news broadcast later that day showed about 10 seconds of my footage, which by extrapolation, was the highest-ever hourly rate I’ve ever earned: ~$48,600/hour.
The lesson here was that DV and DV-adjacent workflows were difficult in a pro context even when they were mainstream in the consumer market.
This started long ago. In the 1980s, pros used 60 minute Umatic cassettes because it was the standard and it was the highest quality format. Home users had VHS and Beta (and laserdisc and CED discs and...) The pro market was mostly short videos / news segments / local insertion commercials so a 60 minute Umatic tape limitation was fine with the pros. In the home market, VHS won over Beta in part because the recording time was longer and it meant that most rental movies didn't need a second cassette and a swap in the middle of the movie. To your point, most video production companies had VHS and Beta decks if they needed home formats (I was playing with my VHS-C camcorder and caught that plane crash on tape), but even in the dark ages of NTSC, pros didn't want to use home formats unless they absolutely had to.
For modern movies, where you likely need to adjust some things in the scene using CGI, it is much easier to just add VFX to a pristine 4k image and then deep fry it with something like this.
As for your second point. A friend of mine's little sister asked him for help setting up the vintage camera she bought. And it was an early 00s digital point & shoot.
And if you want to give a really unsettling effect, you could first apply a filter like this, then add some crisp CG on top of it.
Give the idea that this is something from another reality.
I've never been a smartphone user, and have moved from a Flip Camcorder, to various point-and-shoots in video mode (never liked very much), and just in the last 3 years, have discovered that Sony handicams are now pocket-sized, I never considered carrying around one before, but it's actually completely reasonable.
The model (HDRCX405) is wonderful, 30x optical zoom a real value-add over smartphones, but also I just love the ergonomics in general, very easy to pick it up, and start a video within a second.
That said, Sony discontinued the low-end handicam line last year (this model went from $200 new to $800 used), which is really unfortunately, right as I hope this niche might gain momentum.
The difference is that films had better performances than digital equivalents in some areas for a long time. It isn't/wasn't just nostalgia.
The imaging device used in electronic camcorders before the transition to CCD had visibly gray whites. They weren't so great by any standards. Hence very few chases it, with nostalgia being the sole reason to do it.
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