Is there any better way to fix crumpled VHS tapes?

[Caius]

I know there are great VCRs that correct the video signal of crumpled tapes by a few percent.
But so far I haven't found a way to unwrinkle these tapes so that the video signal is readable again.

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[netmask56]

The simple answer is you cannot repair or even make it playable. Some professional archive organisations use a special device that hasn't any electrical connections (to avoid magnetic fields) to very very gently warm the tape over time. This seems to work for a single one clean crease. As for crumpled!! Maybe NASA??? Probably the only solution is to cut your losses and physically edit the tape removing the crumpled portion. Definitely a job for a professional archiving organisation.

[dellsam34]

Ironing at low temperature with cotton cloth in between may help, Though it will never get rid of the wrinkles completly and the signal will never be recovered since the magnetic surface has been damaged, in other words removing wrinkles will not improve the RF signal, A TBC may help avoid frame drop and give you a noisy stable frame but will never fix the RF drop from the tape, Even the VCR's DOC cannot help. Not to mention that there is a great chance of damaging the video heads or clogging them. There is no point of capturing those sections.