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Hi..... some of the quality issue will be with the tapes themselves... and the playback m/c is bound to have had a long-life, so could be lacking quality ( although "Digital" should not degrade ).
It's good the originals are SP - but you don't say if the original recorder is broken... I presume it's now not available....
Have you tried a local film-making club - their older members may have a working camcorder which you can use to record the files to an external HDD. After transfer you can play with "settings" to improve/edit the footage. The same goes for the audio. If the mono sound is not from a stage ( where L-R might be important ), you can pan the audio during Edit and link Mono to both L R - so if this is a back-stop Option, perhaps you should give it a try . . . Video Editing can be quite tricky to learn, although everyone likes their chosen software . . . it probably comes down to cost. However, you'd be well advised to avoid free software, even from known "good" = safe sources . . . there's a reason it's free! Paying £50-100 is probably about as good as most folks need - and if it integrates with a dedicated Audio editor so much the better.
Not sure about that mono replay - Are you sure it was recorded in Stereo? - it's possible a setting was put there by mistake...
However, most camcorder audio is only stereo because it appears to sounds better in playback ( and "STEREO" Sells! ) - pity manufacturers don't apply the same quality logic to TV built-in speakers ( typically rubbish, IMHO).
Sound recorded at a distance is mono - rather like vision is really 2D except close-to when 3D gives us depth...
Good luck. |
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