Resurrecting the Panasonic NV-M5 VHS camcorder (Part 1)

• Introduction
• Why a VHS camcorder?
• Purchasing
• Initial tests
• Plan A: Power via cigarette adapter, record to VHS
• Death of the tape mechanism
• Plan B1: 3D print a replacement battery housing
• Plan B2: Buy a replacement battery and record composite
• Future work

Introduction

The Panasonic NV-M5 (also sold/branded as the National NV-M5) is a lovely VHS camcorder produced between 1986 and 1988. I was lucky enough to pick up one of these bad boys for $100AUD on Facebook Marketplace from a seller on the Gold Coast, in quite good physical condition.

While the physical condition of the device was good, this is a piece of consumer electronics that’s almost 40 years old. Among other things; the battery is, of course, dead as a doorknob. Unfortunately, the AC power adapter is also dead.

But - let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’d like to walk you through the whole experience, from conception to resurrection. The full how and why. Let’s get to it!

Why a VHS camcorder?

Interestingly, as multimedia technology gets better and better, we (“young folks”) find ourselves yearning for the technology of yesteryear. Whether that’s the well-documented resurrection of film photography, or the printing of new vinyls, it seems like there’s genuine interest in the imperfect, tactile technology of years prior. You could probably write an entire dissertation about the why of this, but I think in general young people have become bored and tired of the increasingly perfect, touch-screen “tap to record” nature of modern media. The fact that you can just record something in the press of a button is incredible, but it also means that these moments aren’t quite as valued as they used to be. Of course, I’m saying “young people” as a generalisation; the user stats of apps like Snapchat show that most are perfectly happy using the camera(s) on their iPhones or Androids. But nonetheless, there’s definitely an undercurrent of young folks interested in this older technology, and I am one!

The big question is whether this applies to VHS. Shows like Stranger Things demonstrate that the 80s chic remains popular in the 2020s, but does that mean the “chic” is popular (i.e. we’re looking through rose coloured glasses), or is the actual technology popular? Compared to VHS, film is analogue media and in some cases could be considered to be objectively better than digital. VHS, on the other hand, is more digital (the tape media itself could be considered analogue, but the signal comes from a digital CCD in the first place) and has a distinctly crappy look. The question is if this crappiness is “nostalgic” and “aesthetic”. Personally, I think it is, and it perfectly suits the melancholy vibes of the project I’m trying to create. In any case, as an art project, I am undertaking this to express a certain feeling. It doesn’t matter one bit to me what other people think, if it looks like shit, if it’s popular - all that matters is I’m proud of it, and it expresses the feeling I am trying to express.

Purchasing

Until recently, I was not someone who had ever really bought things second hand. This was a really fun experience! I pretty much searched Facebook Marketplace for “vhs camcorder”, and scrolled for a while. There was a Sony Viewcam available for a decent price, but I also saw two Panasonic NV-series cameras available, and decided I really wanted them. They’re huge, bulky, but are also authentically VHS, rather than Hi8 or even mini-VHS. This is about as VHS as you can get.

The first seller on Marketplace never responded, but I was able to get in touch with the second seller who has very responsive. This involved quite a long drive to the Gold Coast, but he was nice enough and all in all I was able to secure the camera for $100 cash-in-hand; condition not guaranteed. I wasn’t too concerned about not knowing the condition of the camera, as I figured with enough patience I could restore it from almost any condition. I also figured the price wasn’t too bad considering how much it likely initially cost.

Initial tests

The camera came in a black briefcase from Panasonic. There was a small amount of paint damage and cobwebs, but it was otherwise in good condition. Opening the case up, I was extremely thankful (and lucky!) to see all the accessories present in mostly very good condition. The lens for the viewfinder, which is intended to be able to be flipped up, had come loose. A number of the cables were sticky, which despite what my friends are saying ¹, I believe is nothing more than heat damage due to the cables melting slightly.

The camera contained a VHS tape, which unfortunately, I have not been able to dump and may not be able to as it’s currently jammed in the failed VHS mechanism (we’ll get to that later).

The camera also came with a very bulky and slightly horrifying AC adapter with what looked like significant damage to the cable. Nonetheless, I put my safety aside and plugged it straight into mains and gave it a shot. Unfortunately, I did discover that the adapter was dead, so I had to devise another way to power the camera.

Plan A: Power via cigarette adapter, record to VHS

I acquired a copy of the manual, and scanned it with OCR, which I’ve uploaded here. The manual has a really interesting excerpt (pp. 14 for those reading along at home). Have you ever heard of a camera that can be powered by a car’s cigarette lighter socket? I certainly haven’t - this is a first!

I did actually test this with the cigarette lighter adapter of my car, and sure enough, the camera came to life! Awesome! The viewfinder was also fully functional too, here’s an aesthetic photo of it:

One fun fact about this viewfinder is it’s actually powered by a tiny CRT. There is a really good teardown of the entire camera available here.

Now, I don’t plan to always connect this camera to my car in order to use it. To liberate it from my motor vehicle, we will need to procure the two strangest adapters I have ever searched for, and somehow found:

• AC to cigarette lighter plug, for use at home
• Cigarette lighter to USB-C, for use on the go

There is something so completely whimsical about “Cigarette lighter to USB-C” I will probably never get tired of.

With that sorted, my plan was to then attach this to a cheap USB-C powerbank. The whole setup looked as follows:

The plan was then going to be to record to a VHS tape, put the VHS tape into a VCR, and capture it using a cheap composite capture cable, then Bob’s your uncle. Unfortunately…

Death of the tape mechanism

Unfortunately, on 11/12/2024, the tape mechanism on this lovely device died. The tape rewind motor appears to work correctly, but hitting the “eject” button does nothing. It sounds to me like the motor or gearing system powering the actual eject mechanism has died. The motor sounds like it’s either stalling or straining, but does not eject the tape.

This puts me in a difficult situation. We can no longer eject the tape to test it on a VHS player, and we can’t just extract the tape manually either, because it’s likely wound around the heads inside the VHS player inside the camera. Doing this would really destroy it. Likewise, it’s going to be nigh impossible to repair the tape mechanism itself, both because we can’t open the device (there’s a giant tape in the way), and because it would be challenging to source the necessary motors and gears to repair (let alone install them).

So… this brings us to the slightly more difficult, and slightly more expensive option. Plan B.

Plan B1: 3D print a replacement battery housing

Let’s preface this by explaining that, as a computer science graduate, I am not someone who should be messing around with CAD. That being said, I thought it might be fun to give it a try, it can’t be thaaat hard, right?! The idea is basically to design and 3D print a “fake battery” for the camera, and then use the composite out signals via the back port, and capture video to an SD card using a cheap portable composite DVR, or a laptop in my backpack, or possibly even a Raspberry Pi if I can find one.

So, I installed FreeCAD on my Linux machine, and started with it. Initially, I was going to design the battery from scratch based on measurements of the real physical thing. That looked like this:

Yeah… I really did only get as far as a sliced open box before giving up. As I said, as a CS graduate, I am not someone who knows how to use CAD, or should even be given the privilege to use CAD!

Nonetheless, while I realised that modelling the entire battery from scratch was impractical, I still wanted to give it a try. I did some digging, and managed to find an identical battery on Mouser through a bit of an involved process ². Amazingly, this Mouser listing had a full datasheet, including not only technical drawings, but also a full CAD model!

I downloaded the CAD model in STL form, and imported it into FreeCAD. Then, I had a go at slicing the battery in half and extruding some of the faces. This kind of worked, but because of the way the battery had been imported from the STL, proved finnicky. I eventually gave up, but got these results in the process:

OK, so, since the crazy CAD plan didn’t work, what’s the play next?

Plan B2: Buy a replacement battery and record composite

Amazingly, replacement batteries are relatively easy to find for this model online. There are plenty of US shops selling them, but do not ship internationally; I suppose it’s hard to ship a giant fuck-off lead acid battery internationally. I was able to track down an Australian vendor, and purchased the battery.

The reason we need a replacement battery is that the cigarette connector for the camera has, for some reason unbeknownst to me, a proprietary AV connector. This means that we can’t simultaneously power it with the Amazon battery and extract video.

Later that week the battery arrived, and man, is this thing heavy! It comes in at almost a kilo.

Now, originally I purchased the cheap USB composite capture cable in order to record a VCR. But, now that the back port is free of the cigarette adapter, we can connect the standard composite output that comes with the camera and record directly! I simply plugged this into my laptop and fired up OBS. And - can you believe it - it’s alive!! I quickly went out to record some test footage, and ended up with this, which I’m pretty happy with:

I’m using the song On and On by Daniel Joshua, which I bought from his Bandcamp. Highly recommended you listen and buy as well if it’s your jam, Bandcamp was a pleasure to use. I’m releasing the video content (but not the audio, which is Daniel’s, not mine) under the CC-BY 4.0 licence, along with the rest of this site.

Future work

I’m really happy I got the above test footage - it was almost everything I was hoping for. However, the road is not over yet. There are quite a few problems that need fixing.

The shitty USB 2.0 composite capture device I bought from Amazon is, unsurprisingly, shit. So shit in fact that it’s beginning to disintegrate on me. In fact, if you even slightly wiggle the cable at all, it completely drops the signal and hangs the recording. This basically means the camera is currently unusable, because by nature of the laptop being in my backpack, the cable gets wiggled around all the time.

My plan to fix this ties into the second problem, which is that the camera is currently extremely heavy for no real reason. As we talked about earlier, the VHS mechanism is entirely dead. Based on the teardown, the VHS mechanism seems to consist almost entirely of either solid steel or aluminium components. My current plan to fix this is to completely gut the VHS mechanism, and replace it with something like a Raspberry Pi. I’m hoping this will make it significantly lighter, as the remaining components should just be plastic and the lens assembly. The only problem is that this does run the serious risk of permanently damaging the camera, and I’m not even sure that the camera will easily be capable of operating with the VHS mechanism completely removed. I do feel bad for doing this, because I feel like I’m damaging a historical artefact, but the VHS mechanism is completely non-functional so serves no purpose. Plus, I might be able to extract the tape as well if I fully gut the VHS mechanism (whether the tape is in playing condition or not, is another question).

Finally, although the results of the video were mostly what I were expecting, they seem to be uncharacteristically overexposed. I’m not sure if that’s expected from this type of camera, or if it’s a problem with my specific camera. In any case, I’m planning to look into that and see what I can do.

So – hope you enjoyed, thanks for reading this far, and stay tuned for Part 2!

Updated 13/2/2025 to fix some typos. Thanks Angus S. :)