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  1. Member
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    My 9 year old accidently over wrote a VHS tape that I made many moons ago of my high school football career (With "That's so Raven"). Is it possible to save the original recording? Any help or ideas will be sincerly appreciated.

    Thanks.
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  2. Always Watching guns1inger's Avatar
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    Take it down to Grissom at CSI. Realistically that is about your best hope. While it may be theoretically possible, I know of no such service available to us mere mortals.
    Read my blog here.
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  3. Member mstone321's Avatar
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    If you have more tapes you want to protect, now would be a good time to break off the record tab on the back spline of the cassette.
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  4. Banned
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    I don't think it's even theoretically possible. I read about how some old recording sessions of Elvis at Sun Records were lost forever because the tapes were re-used. Given how magnetic tape works, I don't think it's possible to recover the original program, but if it was, it would probably cost you a LOT of money, like over $1000 to do it.

    You definitely need to break the record tab off the cassettes like mstone321 says and consider transferring what you've got to DVD while you can. VHS tapes won't last forever and the longer you wait, the more likely they are to degrade or have other accidents happen to them.
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  5. Video Restorer lordsmurf's Avatar
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    No, sorry.
    Break the write tabs off all your tapes.
    Want my help? Ask here! (not via PM!)
    FAQs: Best Blank DiscsBest TBCsBest VCRs for captureRestore VHS
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  6. well, what if it was the fact that 'we' do break that taps off, but someone sticks on a strip of celotape to record on the tape again?
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  7. Originally Posted by Undead Sega
    well, what if it was the fact that 'we' do break that taps off, but someone sticks on a strip of celotape to record on the tape again?
    Break off the tabs and then hide all of the tape


    --dES
    "You can observe a lot by watching." - Yogi Bera
    http://www.areturningadultstudent.com
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  8. Member Marvingj's Avatar
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    As other mention tear off tab, No way to save it........
    http://www.absolutevisionvideo.com

    BLUE SKY, BLACK DEATH!!
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  9. Banned
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    Originally Posted by Undead Sega
    well, what if it was the fact that 'we' do break that taps off, but someone sticks on a strip of celotape to record on the tape again?
    Well if your 9 year old is smart enough to take your vhs tape and put tape over it to record, it's time to put the fear of god into them or put your tapes in a vault
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  10. Member olyteddy's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by Undead Sega
    well, what if it was the fact that 'we' do break that taps off, but someone sticks on a strip of celotape to record on the tape again?
    Then the next step is to break all the fingers off...
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  11. Always Watching guns1inger's Avatar
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    Then the next step is to break all the fingers off...
    I prefer bolt cutters - much cleaner cut.
    Read my blog here.
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  12. Member StuR's Avatar
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    A less violent approach might be to try and find any origonals you used to make the video and contact any old friends who also had copies. Then you could all meet up and watch it.
    This happy ending is courtesy of the Disney corporation.
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  13. Member
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    man..if coach would've put you in..you would've gone to state...no doubt in my mind.
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  14. Member
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    I know the CIA & FBI have forensics equipment that can extract residual video data from an erased/overwritten tape, but I suspect that any such recovered video would (at best) be barely good enough to convey the original content's information, and would be almost completely unwatchable as video per se. In other words, if you were videotaped murdering someone, erased the tape, and recorded a TV show over it, they MIGHT be able to go over it with a custom read head & DSPs to recover the video signal of you murdering someone by having the DSPs look for subtle variances in the new signal (kind of like looking for a watermark). But like I said, the best they could probably end up with would be something like a shadowy Y-Cr channel, with less contrast, that kind of looked like one blurry shadow doing something to another blurry shadow.

    If it were merely erased, or something equally stupid were done (like recording a blue screen or color bars over it instead of a live TV program), they could probably extract a lot more (since the subtle variances from "100% blank" tape would stand out more against the new signal), but it would still be a major reach. And unfortunately, the last time I checked, the FBI & CIA don't do video recovery on the side to supplement their annual budgets
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