The Technical Side of Grace Notes: Midi and the Missing Sheet Music

     Still celebrating the first brand new posting of my own piano arrangement (Stepping On The Clouds).  Part One of this "Technical Side of Grace Notes" article dealt with how I learn a new song and the process of creating the finished video and blog post.  Today we'll finish with getting the Midi file on Blogger, and acknowledging the missing sheet music.  Then, I'll have a solid reminder against the future and my failing memory.  :^)

    In the previous post, I explained how to save all three elements from Ableton.  The full SET, so I can always re-create the Midi and .wav files.  Just in case.  Plus, of course, the actual Midi and .wav files.  We already applied the .wav file to the video, for a clean audio track with no ambient noise.

    The Midi file I do for it's own sake, for those readers who want it.  Either just to play with Midi on their own setup, or to use Midi as a controllable process for learning how to play my arrangements.  If you downloaded the Midi in order to learn the song, I strongly recommend using Midiano.com as a teaching tool.  It plays my music more "true" than just about anything out there.  It has a visual keyboard you can watch to see the notes as they fall, and the ability to slow down the playback for easier learning.  Plus many other options.

    Not that I have any illusions about my skill level.  There are a ton of musicians on YouTube that put me to shame.  But as my Mom said, there are also plenty of people who are at the perfect level to learn and appreciate what I can offer.  So I don't let all those better players prevent me from putting my two cents in!  

    I'd call my complexity level simple to middling.  There are at least three sites out there that link to my playing as the ideal way to play a specific song.  One of them is even using my sheet music AND my video (it was for Amazing Grace). 
    They were kind enough to give full credit, and to rate the complexity at "Intermediate".  That's higher than I'd expect, and it's very kind of them to share my music.  It validates Mom's advice.

    The real struggle with the Midi wasn't in creating the file, but in getting it onto Blogger in a way that's easy for readers to download.  On the original Grace Notes, I was paying a... large percentage of income... to have a dedicated site to use Wordpress, which I loved.  It had a lot more versatility than Blogger.  But hosting the site got drastically more expensive every single year.  Now I use Google Blogger.  Blogger itself is free.  And a basic Google Workspace is only $12.00 per month.  I still have my custom url, Crewman6.com, and that's a low once-a-year fee.  

    To get to the point, Wordpress offers many options, and you can easily attach just about ANY kind of file for download. Blogger, oddly, only offers Video, Images, or links to other web pages.  Having other filetypes, like Midi, requires a workaround. So here's the gist of it:

    Put the Midi file in your Google Drive, give access to anybody with the link, and copy the link.  Then go to Google Drive Direct Link Generator.  Follow the instructions there to paste your link, then create a direct download link to your Google Drive file.  This is extremely important.  If you try to link to the URL generated by Google Drive, it will open an entirely new webpage, loading it in OVER your blog post.  Then it will attempt to play the midi file in your browser.  Then it will tell you the browser can't play that file, and offer to let you download the file.  THEN you can finally select to download the file.

    That's a huge pain, and the reader winds up on a completely different page, no longer on your post.  Using Google Drive Direct Link Generator is awesome, and free.  It lets you put the modified link on any text or image in your Blogger post, and anybody who clicks the link will be able to simply download the file.  I like choosing where to save downloaded files, so use the "Save As" option.  You might have your downloads default to a single directory for all downloads.  Either is fine.  The point is, the viewer easily downloads the file, without disrupting their reading.  

    Next up, those missing sheet music pages.  On the old Grace Notes blog, I used MidiSheetMusic to both play, and generate sheet music.  It did a great job, but is outdated now and doesn't work with any Midi generated by Ableton.  (Resaving from another Midi player doesn't help either.)  Now I'm in the process of finding another program that can convert Midi to Sheet music, and allow me to make image files of the sheet music.  Originally, those images were saved into .pdf files and uploaded to the blog for anybody that wanted to download.  That's still the plan, but it's been difficult to find software that does exactly what I need.

    I thought I'd solved the problem with MuseScore, which is free to download, converts Midi to sheet music, and allows printing.  Unfortunately, my play-by-ear style seems to confuse Musescore, and when it plays the music back, it completely messes up the order of notes.  Especially if they're played very close together to accentuate the melody.  You know... kind of like a "Grace Note"...  

    Not sure why it struggles with that, because it's sleek and sophisticated software that I like a lot.  Unfortunately, it's not the only one that struggles with my midi.  So far the rule is, if it understands my playing properly, it either offers no sheet music generation, or the function is only available with purchase of the full software.  All the free players that generate printable sheet music have been unable to play the files correctly.

    My favorite, Midiano, plays my stuff perfectly, but as of yet, has no option to create sheet music.  That's not really what Midiano's about, anyway.  My second favorite is a paid software called Notation Musician.  They have a free version, so I KNOW it can play my music perfectly, exactly as intended.  They also generate sheet music.  But the free version does not allow print output.  Yes, I could do screengrabs page by page, but I want to do this the right way.  I'll save up until I can buy the software properly.

    That said, it's $90.00 to purchase, and our budget is very finely balanced to buy food, fuel, pay insurance and taxes.  There's not a lot of leeway for fun things that don't 'earn their keep' monetarily.  So it may take a while to buy Notation Musician.  When I do, I'll go back to any posts as needed and add sheet music downloads.  For now, you're welcome to convert my Midi into sheet music in any way that works for you.  Again, I recommend Midiano.  It's an amazing learning tool, and one of the few players that interprets my playing exactly as intended.

And that's where I'm at, in terms of continuing on Grace Notes.  The last two 'technical' posts were intended to act as memory storage, in case I forget how to do these steps, but I published them just in case any of it might be useful to someone else.  If anybody other than my wife or my mom read these last two posts in their entirety, I'll be totally amazed.  :^D

The Technical Side of Grace Notes: Creating the Video and Sharing the Midi Files

     Yesterday marked a huge milestone here.  I finally posted my first brand new page of my own arrangement on piano, with a downloadable midi file of the piano arrangement.  It's been months in the process, learning and relearning all the associated elements. Writing this post is both a celebration... and my crib notes on the general process, in case I forget how to do it all again.  :^)

    I use M-Audio's Hammer 88 to play the songs.  I'm a strictly 'play-it-by-ear' type, so there's no music notation, no hours scribbling my music on notes.  Just sounding out different ways of playing, trying alternatives, and bit by bit designing an arrangement that appeals.  Once the idea is in my head, the hard part is memorizing that arrangement, and practicing until I can play the song (nearly) perfectly.  

    I'm in my 60's, and Covid really messed up my focus and comprehension.  It literally took 3 months to be ready to record.  Then stage fright kicks in.  Hours of playing/recording on Sunday.  More hours on Monday.  Tuesday I sat down, did a practice run-through, and the second attempt was as close to perfect as I'll probably ever get.  So that's the video you see.  (The song in this case is "Stepping On The Clouds.")

   Ableton Live Lite 10 came free with the Hammer 88.  So that's how I play and record the music.  Nothing fancy.  Once Ableton was installed and working, and a few technical set-up issues resolved, it was ready.  To record, I click the round "Record" button, start playing.  When I make a mistake, click "Stop", then "Play", then "Stop".  From trial and error, this activates a blue bar on the midi recording track, which I can then click to make Ableton's notation window pop open.  Click anywhere on the notation (inside the window that just popped up).  Select All (hold down CTRL and type "A".)

    Then I hit the DEL key, and for good measure, also hit the Backspace key.  Now it's a clean slate again.  Click the "Record" button again, and start playing.  Once the whole song is recorded satisfactorily, stop the recording, open the notation window and select All again.  
        {Without selecting ALL, the EXPORT features stay grayed out and don't activate.}

Then, under the FILE dropdown menu, first save the entire process as an Ableton Set (.als file).  Next, still on the File Menu, select EXPORT Midi, and save the midi version of the song.  Lastly, STILL on the File Menu, select EXPORT Audio.  I like to save the file in a ".wav" file format.  Mp3 is more popular, but Wav plays back at a constant speed.  It's not compressed so you can reliably count on the bitrate being stable.  I set it at 44000, 32-bit, and select "Normalize."  It's best if you first set your audio levels to not go over 0 decibels.  If the audio levels go into the red zone, it's set too loud.

    If it's time to record the video as well, I like to start recording, and keep playing even when I make mistakes and have to start over. (Tripod tip: Make sure you're pointing at the piano and frame the image as nicely as you can.  Don't forget to remove unsightly elements like the trash can under the keyboard...)
So, don't stop recording the video.  Keep recording nonstop, through every attempt.  There's a clear visual cue because every restart, the Ableton track needs to be stopped and reset before starting to play again.  When a good recording is achieved, upload the video to your computer.  To find the beginning in-point when editing, start at the end of the video, and scrub backwards until you come to the starting point of your perfect rendition.  Delete all the 'bad' footage in front of that, trim the end a bit if needed, to get your perfect video ready for audio.

    I use HitFilm Express to edit.  It's a free video editor, does a good job, and was easy to learn the bare minimum to create these videos.  Having already imported the video and trimmed it to just the 'good' part, now IMPORT the .wav file.  Drag it to the track just underneath the video.  You should see the video track, including the audio that recorded on the video track, PLUS the .wav audio file you just dragged under the video.

    Make sure both audio tracks are active.  Play the video, and see how close the two audio tracks are to playing in sync.  Make note of how close, which one starts first, then DRAG the .wav left or right to align with the video's audio track.  It's like lip syncing.  You may have to expand the visible track range, to give finer control over how much you move left or right.

    Do this until the Video audio track and the .wav audio are perfectly matching.  Then UNCHECK the video audio.  It's a little speaker symbol on the left.  Play the video again.  Now only the .wav audio track should be playing, and it should be perfectly synced with the fingers moving as they play the piano.
NOTE: if the .wav needs to move farther left than the video track will allow, select all and drag everything to the right to give yourself a bit of working room.

    Once the video and .wav are synced and the original video audio turned off, trim the ends again if needed. If both tracks aren't fully left-justified to the 0:00 starting point, select All and drag them to the 0:00 time marker.  Export the video as an mp4 file on your hard drive, and upload the video to YouTube.  On Blogger, it's easy to click the video button and select your YouTube video for insertion on the blog post.

I treat the audio this way to clean the original video-recorded audio.  Audio recorded directly in your video (I use my cell phone) is fuzzy, and picks up all the ambient noise.  Dogs barking, phones ringing, people talking... the .wav created from Ableton is crisp, clear, and clean of ambient noise.  It's like you recorded in a studio, with proper microphones.

This is a good stopping point.  I'll finish up in the next post.  We'll take a look at getting Midi onto Blogger in a way that's easily downloadable.

Southern Gospel on Piano is finally back: Stepping On The Clouds!!

 

Click Here to download Midi File Click Here to download the Sheet Music

If you want to learn to play the song using the Midi file, I recommened using Midiano. It has a ton of customizing and control options to make learning songs easier.

This was a long time in the making. My memory isn't what it used to be, and the hands aren't as steady. After Covid my focus drifts and I wind up forgetting what I'm doing right in the middle of a song. Took 3 months of practicing before even trying to record it... and 3 days to finally get one good enough to keep! Hours the first two days. On the third day lightning struck and it only took two tries.

    This is a song Uncle Freil used to play as a special for Aunt Elsie Mae to sing. Not sure how many friends and family will remember this one. The only place I ever heard it was when we were going to Grace Baptist Church in Nahunta. I'd completely forgotten this song until a few months ago when some random playing one evening resulted in this song. Had to mull it over for a bit to remember the song title.

    Stepping On The Clouds was written by Linda Stalls. I didn't have much luck learning anything about her or her music until, sadly, disovering her obituary from May, 2021. In 1975 she was nominated for a Dove award for her song, Stepping On The Clouds. It's sad that this, so far, is the most I've been able to find out about her.

    It's easier to find information on The Hoppers, the first gospel family to sing the song. I found that on the blog, TheScottSpot. You can search the Hoppers on Youtube and find a lot of videos featuring them. I appreciate their style. Southern Gospel family groups comprise the majority of my favorite music. Mostly for the happy, toe-tapping gospel music, but catch me in the right mood you'll find me playing slow, soulful songs of yearning and hope.

    This is also something of a personal revival for me. Grace Notes was my blog for about ten years. Life in general got in the way, and I gave it up a couple of years ago. When I decided to recreate it, all my blog posts were lost. Still had all the Youtube videos, so as time passes I'll re-write posts for the songs. I've also been documenting the entire recreation process.

    All along it's been in my mind to record new songs, old favorites, especially ones that Uncle Freil used to play. This inspired a hunt through our two-floor shed, for any audiotapes, video, or CD's of Freil that may have been left in storage over the years. It's been a mostly successful search. Found a lot of his music I'd forgotten, things I haven't heard in decades. One specific video is still missing. Running out of places to look, but still hoping.

    And, in these last few months, I've been working on this arrangement. It's all by ear. Not very good at reading sheet music. It's been a struggle to build enough muscle memory to get through the whole song when my focus wavers. And it's been tough getting to the point where it was good enough to record. The result isn't perfect, but it's close and I'm very happy with it. (And very ready to move on to a new song...)

I truly hope you like it!

Freil Thrift on Piano; from a 30-year old video Using AV2HDMI!

    I've been tearing my shed apart trying to find old recordings of my uncle Freil playing piano.  This VHS tape is over 30 years old, so it's not perfect, but it really means a lot to hear him play again!  I've found several others, but this is exceptional.  Nearly 25 minutes of video with Freil playing, and there are quite a few songs I don't have recorded anywhere else.  The video quality is rough, the tape is stretched, and the VCR's auto-tracking couldn't compensate enough.  But this may be the only surviving copy, and I'm grateful it works at all.

    The search for more recordings is just about over.  I've gone through nearly every box that could possibly hold any more.  Haven't found the Hi-8 tape I was actually hunting... but did turn up some audio cassettes and vhs tapes. Even got my hands on a couple of record albums he played on.  

    This videotape was recorded somewhere between 1990 and 1991.  Maybe on multiple days.  It wasn't made by me, and I have no recollection of how it came to be in my storage.  It's an awesome video.  The quality's not great... probably a copy, but more importantly, the tape is about 33 years old at this time.  VHS wasn't meant to last this long, way back then nobody knew for sure how long it would hold up.  It certainly hasn't been kept in optimal conditions.  Most of those years were in a box in a shed.

    As a result, the quality would be unacceptable, had it not been for the unique and irreplaceable nature of the subject.  For a few weeks, I couldn't even test it out.  The old digitizer (EZCap) that worked years ago no longer works.   The computer identifies it as attached hardware, but I couldn't find any software able to use it.

 

    In a previous post, I mentioned a YouTube guide by Jumble that explained an inexpensive setup to digitize videotape. It involved an RCA to HDMI converter called MINI AV2HDMI, and a small video capture device that converts HDMI to USB.  Everything else I already had, or was available for free (the OBS "Open Broadcast Software".)  OBS is way over my head, but Jumble explained the basic setup in his video.  Once it was all connected, it still didn't work, but a quick Google search fixed that.  Hint - check your windows privacy settings.  I had all related settings for Windows Webcam turned off.  As simply as turning on permissions, and it was recording video.

    Beyond that, the resulting video files had an odd echo effect.  The audio was being mixed back into itself.  I turned off the desktop/mic volume in OBS, and it worked perfectly.  Or, at least as good as the videotape itself was.  Repairing the damage of years was beyond me.

    The result is a fabulous memory of some of my favorites.  I hope you can forgive the inconsistent video quality and enjoy the music!

    IMPORTANT NOTE!!!

OBS worked great... once.  I didn't use it again for a few weeks, and the next time I tried to use it, there was NO AUDIO.  After days of googling, struggling to learn, trying different things, I went looking for other solutions. Here's the step by step process that finally worked: VLC Media Player Transfer to VHS    

 

New Old Sennheiser RS 120 Wireless Headphone

     Got a little off track here, but the most amazing thing happened today, and needed to be shared.  I'm ... sort of... hard of hearing.  Hearing aids are beyond the family budget, so it's a matter doing the best you can with what you've got.  I tell my friends and coworkers, there's a 3-repeat limit.  I'll ask you to repeat something twice.  If it's still just garbled static, I pretend I heard and move on.  Yes, it causes problems, but asking for repeats gets old, and 3 times is my limit.

    With that in mind, I've struggled with my Hammer 88 and the audio volume on Ableton.  If it's  loud enough for me to hear, it pegs way over 0 decibels.  Lot of red zone, overpowers the speakers, sounds like static when I play it back as WAV.  You'll see on older posts, I've gone through a few hoops trying to find work-arounds.  The best solution so far was to play very loud while recording, save it as an Ableton set.  Then swap to a quieter instrument for export.  Usually MiniGrand x64 #16, Loud, then #01 Real Piano, for the softer tones.

    Also, last night I started using normalize when exporting audio.  It seems to do just as good a job, without jumping through the hoops.  That might sound simple, but I bought the M-Audio Hammer 88 just to have a digital piano. I play a song, record it live, and output Midi/Wav to share my music online.  The Hammer came with Ableton Live Lite 10.  That's sort of like asking for a match and getting a doomsday bomb.  Way over my head, and overpowered for my purposes.  So stuff like using normalize when exporting?  I don't know enough to even understand what question to ask, until something triggers an inspiration.  Then it's like Christmas!

    But... it came FREE with the keyboard.  I like free, and was willing to learn as needed to achieve the goal.  The Hammer 88 was about half the price of my broken Yamaha DG-640 Digital Grand.  Loved that Yamaha but it wore out, and repairing it was expensive. With no guarantees it would keep working.  So here I am, with the Hammer, learning how to do things as they come up.  At times I'd whine about "just wanting to play my piano..."  Ignore the whining.  I do the same thing about blogging.  There's a lot to learn about the modern blogging landscape.  (Like "consent cookies...")  At my age, learning isn't as easy as it used to be.

    Anyway - back to the hearing problem.  My old headphones were cheap, but nice enough.  But they're so old, the leatherette is falling off every time I pick them up.  And it doesn't just fall to the floor in pieces.  When I try to pick them up, they crumble into dust that leaves a mark like fireplace soot.  I have another old pair, still in the blister pack.  (Yes, it's another $20 headphone.)  Used them yesterday, and it was okay.  Just as good as the old ones, but without the disintegrating leatherette.  Monique saw me messing with them, and tinkering with ways to increase audio.  She's also seen me get the wires tangled, forget I was wearing them and walk away from the computer, and generally being a klutz.  She also remembered another pair of headphones.

    More than a decade ago, for a birthday gift, I gave her a wireless headphone set.  She liked watching tv while using the treadmill, and had expressed a desire for something wireless to listen on.  In those days, we were ridiculously extravagant, and the credit cards were like our own private printing press.  So I found some that had nice reviews.  Not sure if memory serves, but I THINK they were around $180.  They never worked quite right for her, maybe there was too much interference in that room, but they were put away and forgotten.  Monique found them again recently while doing a major cleanup in our storage room.  (Translation: eBay selling, model-building, upright freezer, and junk room.)

    She brought them out last night, tested them on her computer, then offered them to me.  The advantages were tremendous, but I live a cluttered life.  After years of building my "mission control" area, I couldn't figure out a place to put the base.  Seriously, no place left that wasn't stacked to the max.  I said "No thank you" regretfully.  This morning, I revised some priorities, got rid of a couple of things I don't really use any more, and... "appropriated" the headphones back.

    Here's the exciting part- after recharging them, and fine-tuning the channel, I tentatively played a song on the Hammer.  AND HEARD IT AS CLEAR AS A BELL!  Not only that, but there's a volume control on one side.  It was set somewhere in the middle.  When I cranked it up, it was actually much too loud.  Finally, finally, finally, I can hear what I'm playing, the way it should be heard, and not have to jump through hoops to correct the final output.  

    I also tested a YouTube video, and understood what they were saying... without subtitles!!  This decade-old Sennheiser RS 120 Wireless is not even available on Amazon any more.  They have an upgraded model now, and it's something like half the price I paid for these.  Don't care.  This is beyond amazing.  These are just fine, thank you very much.  Don't need an upgrade.  Did I mention I like FREE?  Maybe it wasn't free, but after so many years forgotten in a box, and "re-finding" it at a time I really needed the boost, it felt like a free gift.

    More than a gift, it was encouragement at a time I've been struggling.  I have a new song I want to record, and after two months of practicing, have only had 3 perfect practices.  None of them on video, of course.  It's been discouraging, to put it mildly. Being able to hear myself play is revitalizing.  It's brought joy back to my playing, and restored my hopes of being able to record this song soon.  

NOTE: I deliberately didn't add links to Amazon. I'm not trying to sell anything here.  You want to look for yourself, you'll have to Google it on your own.  I found mine on Amazon, but am sure you can find hundreds of retailers selling much the same thing.  I just wanted to express my happiness in being able to hear the music while playing.  :^)

Goodbye World Goodbye: Getting VHS Video Transferred to the Computer

    Last night's post was all about the end result.  Getting to play a duet with my uncle, and sharing it with the world.  Today's going to be the "prequel."  The story of how it got from a 2-decade-old videotape, to the state it's in now, and how I hope to get the real video uploaded eventually.

    To begin with... that photo was taken in 1962.  Freil was the youngest of my aunts and uncles, the baby of the family.  I was two at the time.  Mom's always said Nanny (her Mom) didn't get to see me until I was two, because of Dad's Navy career.  Nanny said I was walking already the first time she saw me.  So, just guessing, this photo might have been during that first visit.

    Fast forward to 1996, there was a family reunion.  We have a huge family, reunions were a big thing.  Freil was there, and of course everybody begged him to play.  I got a pretty long video of him playing.  At one point, he tried to 'escape', and asked me to play.  I've never been as good, but what I know, I learned by watching and listening to him.  Instead of letting us switch, someone asked us to play a song together, and Goodbye World Goodbye was the result.  It was one of those perfect moments, where everything goes absolutely right.  

    The rest of the video was mainly reunion events.  Later, I edited the raw footage, using his music as background track for the scenes.  By the early 2000's I'd sold or worn out most of my equipment, including the Hi-8 Camera.  The original tape is (I hope) somewhere in a box in our shed.  About 2016, Mom brought out one of the edited vhs reunion tapes.  It would have been a third-generation copy- raw Hi-8 to SVHS Master Edit, to regular VHS done using a 6-deck setup for small production duplication.  Better than home quality, way below broadcast quality.  And regardless, it's not optimal to have a final product at 3 generations. Back in the days of analog video, each generation lost significant quality.  

EZCap Video Grabber... not as good as it used to be 

  I bought a cheap transfer device from Amazon - EZCap Video Grabber.  It wasn't great, but it got the job done.  I borrowed Mom's VHS tape, and used an old VCR we still had.  It didn't come with software, but provided a link to free software.  It was already old when I ordered it, but with some tinkering and some online guides, I got it to work on Windows 10, on a computer I no longer have.     
    Now, that one video is on a file on my computer.  It's a poor scan, made from a 3rd-generation copied vhs tape. The video quality is not good enough to rescue, and the footage of Freil was mostly edited out anyway.  All I could save was audio of some of his playing, and that was muddied by background crowd noises.  That was the intent way back then... to use his piano playing as background audio for the reunion.  The conversations, the meal, the prayers, the announcements... I never thought it would be used to rescue Freil's music from.

    I'd forgotten the file existed.  Even that computer is gone, but I always save the internal hard drives from my old computers and add them to the new one.  Recently I was trying to make the EZCap work again.  Some programs acknowledged it's existence (VLC), but none of the ones I tried were compatible with it, including the original software.  It was while trying to run the old software, I found that old family reunion video.  Pure luck and coincidence, but I'll take it.  Sometimes you have to work with what you've got.

Serendipity plus hard work

    Even though the quality was bad, the audio was recognizable.  Hoping for an easy solution, I tried loading the file on Audacity, but Audacity can't load video files.  I tried using HitFilm Express (a free video editor) to separate the audio, but couldn't find an option to save the audio without the video.  There's a lot of results when you google the question, but I wound up using VLC, a free video player with a lot of options.  THIS SITE has a slightly outdated guide, but it was close enough to get me there.
    By the way, Audacity is free too... and a fantastic audio editor.

    With a 33-minute mp3 audio file, I used Audacity to convert it to a WAV file.  WAV is uncompressed, and will always play the audio at a consistent bitrate.  Mp3 is compressed, making it hard to match video clips with perfect timing.  When the whole video is just a single photo it doesn't really matter, but old habits die hard.
    From the Wav file, I edited it down to "Goodbye World Goodbye", equalized the audio trying to highlight the piano and de-emphasize the crowd noises, and exported it as a 32-bit Wav.

    Then back to HitFilm.  Create a project, import the Wav file, drag it into the timeline.  Import the photo, drag into the timeline, stretch the photo duration until it's equal to the audio track.  (It will snap in place when it gets close enough to the audio duration.)  Export the video to hard drive, upload to Youtube, and done.

    I'm still searching for the original raw footage of Freil playing on Hi-8 tape.  Once it's found, I'll have to obtain a Hi-8 player.  My plan is to buy an old one for $200-$250 from eBay, use it for any Hi-8 tapes I have (Not just Freil's, but any I may still find in all those old boxes.)  Then re-sell it on eBay.  It may not break even but at least I won't be out a couple of hundred dollars!

EZCap is outdated, but there's a better way to transfer video to computer

    Though I was able to transfer video using EZCap in the past, I can't recommend it.  It was a pain to get working all those years ago, and now it's not working for me at all.
    The best way I've found to transfer that footage into computer (meaning "effective, yet cheap") costs about $50 from things easily found on Amazon, plus some free software, all of it compatible with an ordinary computer running current Windows.  You'll notice I'm fond of free.  In this case, the list of items, along with a video explaining how to do it, was created by a YouTuber named "JUMBLE."

    There's not much sense in me duplicating his work.  And I don't want to divert his Amazon links for the items you'll need, that's very likely a source of income for him.  So, go watch his short, interesting, and truly informative video, "VCR to Computer - How to connect, watch and record old VHS tapes."  It's well worth the few minutes.  He doesn't add "fluff" to his videos.  It's all solid info.  He provides links to all the hardware, making it very easy to follow his instructions.