Newbie. Bought 2 old VHS players, trying to play an old tape

[llmt]

Basically I’m desperately trying to get my parents old wedding film to play, since I lost both my grandparents and I’d love to see them on screen. I bought two old VHS players to try to play the tape - We have a TCL tv, a samsung si3260 vhs player and a uhddadi Scart to HDMI converter. The video plays but the player switches itself off every minute or so. When the video is playing the audio is fine but the screen is blue with AV/SV flashing in the top corner. The picture comes through for a split second every so often. We don’t have another tape to try at present but I’ll get one to see how that works - any advice on the meantime? We’re in the U.K. thank you!

[greymalkin]

With every play through a VCR of unknown origin on a tape that old you could be doing more damage. I would strongly recommend putting it aside and taking recommendations from folks here on getting it professionally transferred to a digital format.

[Alwyn]

I concur with Greymalkin. Colin at https://www.video99.co.uk/ would be a good one. He's liked by the experts here.

If it was that precious I'd take it to him personally.

Ask him for DV and MP4 format.

The blue flashing is a poor signal through the (probably low quality) converter. The HDMI converters, unless expensive don't do a good job at all. A better VCR and digitiser and possibly a stabilising device will cost you much more than Colin will charge. Unless you've got 20 tapes to do, get him to do it.

[i4004]

The picture comes through for a split second every so often. !

usually dirty video heads.

but shutting off after a minute is different, mechanism issue.