VCR Freezing

[koberulz]

I'm capturing some of my grandparents' old VHS tapes. I've hooked up the VCR to a camcorder via an AV cable, and then a firewire cable going to the PC. I'm capturing with Windows Movie Maker.

Most of them have gone without a hitch, but the most recent tape I've tried just stops at 24 minutes in. The counter on the front of the VCR stops at 24 minutes, and where the seconds are usually displayed, has something going around in a circle. The display, both on the camcorder and WMM's preview window, switches to the blue screen usually displayed when no tape is playing.

What's causing this, and how do I fix it so I can get this tape captured?

[davexnet]

The tape may be bad. Try a second VCR.

[orsetto]

My first thought was perhaps a crease or wrinkle in the tape causes it to stop the VCR at that point, so if you just FF a minute or two past 00:24:00 you might be able to capture the rest of the tape as a second file and then combine the two. Note this won't work during play as a speed search: you'd need to rewind to the beginning of the tape until it stops, zero the counter, then hit FF and watch the counter until it reaches perhaps 00:26:44, then try playing from there.

However, the fact that the little "seconds" circle at the end of the counter display (00:24:<>) is still in motion suggests a much simpler, though unfortunate, explanation: thats all there is on the tape, the original recording was stopped at 00:24:00. If the tape was damaged, it would stop the VCR at that point and the counter display would be frozen at something like 00:24:16. If, instead of an unmoving number in the seconds readout you are seeing a circle spin, this is generally VCR shorthand for "the tape is still moving, but no video or counter track can be read because it is a virgin unrecorded section of tape." Try FF from the beginning 00:00:00 and listen to the machine carefully when it hits the trouble spot at 00:24:00. Does the whirring noise of FF stop and the machine go silent, or does the normal FF sound continue beyond the 00:24:00 and keep going until you eventually hear the tape stop, and perhaps begin to auto-rewind? If so, there is actually nothing on the tape past 00:24:00.

[sanlyn]

Methinks it's possible, the tape was paused, someone forgot it was loaded and hit "Record", recording black video and silence. That happened to me once -- on a highly prized tape!!! I soon noticed the error and hit Stop, but I lost over a minute of video.

[sanlyn]

Methinks it's possible, the tape was paused, someone forgot it was loaded and hit "Record", recording black video and silence. That happened to me once -- on a highly prized tape!!! I soon noticed the error and hit Stop, but I lost over a minute of video from a once-in-a-lifetime recorded broadcast.

[lordsmurf]

"I'm capturing with Windows Movie Maker." <--- That's not very good, either.

Is the tape clean and undamaged?
It could be moldy or oxide is shedding/stuck.

[koberulz]

Try FF from the beginning 00:00:00 and listen to the machine carefully when it hits the trouble spot at 00:24:00. Does the whirring noise of FF stop and the machine go silent, or does the normal FF sound continue beyond the 00:24:00 and keep going until you eventually hear the tape stop, and perhaps begin to auto-rewind? If so, there is actually nothing on the tape past 00:24:00.

It keeps going, and then after several seconds (real time, not tape time), picks back up again as though it had never frozen. Complete with footage on the tape.

"I'm capturing with Windows Movie Maker." <--- That's not very good, either.

Why's that?

Is the tape clean and undamaged?
It could be moldy or oxide is shedding/stuck.

How exactly does one tell?

[orsetto]

It keeps going, and then after several seconds (real time, not tape time), picks back up again as though it had never frozen. Complete with footage on the tape.

Well, this is crucial information you did not mention in your original question: from your description, it seemed that after 00:24:00 you got nothing. If the counter freezes, the screen goes blue, then a few seconds later the video comes back normally and the counter restarts: this is normal with many consumer-recorded tapes. Most typically, its caused by someone hitting "Stop" instead of "Pause" during a recording. On many older VCRs and camcorders, the Stop mode would run the tape a couple inches forward instead of winding slightly back as it was supposed to. If the tape slips forward between recordings, it results in a messed-up couple seconds of dead air that the VCR will mute to blue for a time while it struggles to lock back onto the second recording. This can also be caused by physical damage to the tape, but damage that severe would normally also trigger the safety autostop of the VCR and probably clog the video heads to where you couldn't even use the VCR afterward. Since you are not reporting any other symptoms, your problem is more than likely sloppy editing on the original tape. You can tolerate the interruption, or pause the digital recorder during the glitch, or edit it out later.

Some VCRs allow you to turn off the blue screen video mute that conceals these dead spots. If your VCR has that option, it would show up in the VCR setup menu as Blue Back On/Off? or similar. If you can turn it off, you'll be able to see whats actually going on with the tape at that point (probably a huge rolling glitch of video noise that slowly stabilizes as the next recording on the tape becomes clear).

[koberulz]

I didn't realise there was anything else on the tape until I tried fast-forwarding through the whole thing as per your initial suggestion, because it stays blue and frozen for so long (about 20 seconds while fast-forwarding). Which also suggests it's not someone hitting stop, as that would be significantly shorter.

[koberulz]

"I'm capturing with Windows Movie Maker." <--- That's not very good, either.

So what should I be doing?