[Gordonjcp]

Sony Handycam implies possibly Video 8 or Hi8 tapes.

If you can get hold of a Digital8 deck that works (and well) then you can hook that to your PC with a FireWire card, and do a direct digital capture of analogue tapes. The DSP in the D8 deck will do an excellent job of decoding, far better than an analogue deck, and you'll get a really clean output without all the "convert down/convert up/convert back down" thing you get using composite jacks.

You'll need to convert the raw DV files into something suitable for editing and distributing, but I guess - since you're on here - you already know about ffmpeg.

Here's an example of a very old - 2000/2001 or so! - tape that I had lying around in a box in the shed for the past 20 years. I shot it with a hand-held Sony Video 8 camcorder when some power station chimneys were being demolished near where I worked. This would (of course) be the day I forgot to throw a tripod in the car, "Oh I don't need to pack that, I've got one in the workshop, I'll leave mine at home..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPmCygZIjio

It was a pretty grey and drizzly day, as I recall. I could have got the colours up a bit in editing but I didn't feel like it, and this is pretty much how it came off the quite-badly-damaged tape.