Killed a vhs tape by playing it once

[aiw9800proman]

Hi all,

I have just put an old vhs tape in my jvc vcr and played through the first 5 minutes. Tbc and colour controls did a pretty good job so I rewound to start a full capture. To my horror the entire 5 minutes I had just previewed is now completely destroyed with massive black bars rolling constantly up the screen, and neither of my 3 tbc's can do anything about it.

I understand that working with old tape is a risk but ive never had footage destroyed after just one preview. Have I got a case of magnetic fields wizzing around somewhere in the loop ?

Cheers

Mick

[richdvd]

a TBC won't fix that.
i doubt anything will.

[Cole]

I do sympathise; my most prized VHS tape (circa 1984) got caught in a VCR and I was heart broken. Thankfully though this occured on the tape between two episodes just catching the end titles of the first, so I kind of got away with it.

The only time however, I have had a situation like yours was years ago when I had a tape snap near the beginning. I opened up the VHS cassette and spliced the tape back onto the first spool (loosing the transparent part). Played fine the first time, but then I rewound it. When it reached the end of the rewind, it didn't automatically stop and stretched the tape. Result? Unwatchable for the first half hour.

[aiw9800proman]

Thanks for the replies.

I do some conversions for friends and family and sometimes 'outside customers' are on the list. Think its time to draw up a legal disclaimer and make them read it first !

Cheers

Mick

[lordsmurf]

How does the tape look?

Also, if you FF while playing, the first few minutes of a tape are EASILY EATEN.

Cassettes can also be aligned badly, and cause an error. More recent MAXELL tapes, especially the S-VHS ones, are horrible about this.

[rgs_uk]

Ugh reminds me of one time I turned round to find a friend fast forwarding through a tape 'to clear the fault' that had occured as he was watching it. I agree with Lord Smurf... Most damage seems to be done during picture search and also load/eject.

[pippas]

It might be worth checking the edge of the tape for a ripple or serated effect along the bottom edge - I had the same experience as you, and the problem seemed to be caused by the tape transport damaging the tape on first play.

Maybe if the tape had been stored flat, and not rewound for sometime, it can 'sag', and not feed into the transport cleanly?

First thing to check - try a non important tape to confirm that the deck is OK.

If it is, then you can either capture a tape on first play (in case of the above happening again), or perhaps try a complete wind/ rewind before first play, to 'freshen up' the tape -- I have never had the problem again, if I do that.

[Roundabout]

I would, to determine if the fault is with the tape or with the machine, find another tape to play in it that you don't care about. If it doesn't happen with another tape, perhaps something was wrong with the tape and/or cassette mechanism in it.

On the other hand, if it happens with another tape, you know the fault's in your machine, and you should have it looked at or repaired (or replace it).

If the unit hasn't been used much, you could have a problem with a sticky tape guide, pinch roller, or something else. Or you could have a tension problem. A lot of VHS units (esp. Sony) will destroy a tape if you haven't used the machine in a long time, because the loading arms stick and jam without lubrication. I forsee a lot of people's VHS machines are likely to have problems in the future, if they let them sit around for a long period of time without use. Just like cars in some ways, they need some occasional use to remain lubricated. As I said, some units are worse about this than others.

Certainly, FF and RW search will sometimes cause problems, as the tension changes when going from play to RW (or FF) search sometimes are too much for the tape to handle. I avoid doing that on any tapes that I care about, and also avoid leaving in Play/Pause mode for more than a few seconds at a time (or not at all unless necessary).

[pluche]

I've seen the same phenomena like you did: playing a 10 years old tape, all goes well but when I try to replay it again, totally impossible;
closer invesigation revlead this happened only with "hihg quality" or so-called "pro " VHS tapes ; while all my (even much older) standerd VHS tapes never showed these problems
similar, but not as bad: my 10-15 year old sVHS tapes showed more defect on playing than the standerd VHS tapes

my assuption : standard and cheap VHS tapes have a magnetic layer that consists of +- 15 percent of an organic binder and +- 85 percent of magnetic particles (iron oxide and others) - that means in coating terms that ratio of filler (magnetic particles) to binder is already very high (much higher than in other coatings like paints etc...)

in very hihg quality tapes (as far as recording quality is concerned) the magnetic filler to binder ratio goes even up to 90/10 - this probably causes more damage upon aging of the tape

[hiptune]

Hi all,

I have just put an old vhs tape in my jvc vcr and played through the first 5 minutes. Tbc and colour controls did a pretty good job so I rewound to start a full capture. To my horror the entire 5 minutes I had just previewed is now completely destroyed with massive black bars rolling constantly up the screen, and neither of my 3 tbc's can do anything about it.

I understand that working with old tape is a risk but ive never had footage destroyed after just one preview. Have I got a case of magnetic fields wizzing around somewhere in the loop ?

Cheers

Mick

Open the deck, and clean the heads with a Q tip and head cleaner, the old tape may have left too much crud behind, and may respond favorably to clean heads. I would not give up on this tape yet. Pehaps a different deck with play the tape ok. Be sure to be ready to capture on the different deck to PC, in the event you are going to get one more pass before death. But I do have 25 year old beta tapes that are playing well. A bit faded, but they play. VHS too! Fairly stable products if stored in cool dry climates.

[verchad]

Thanks for the replies.

I do some conversions for friends and family and sometimes 'outside customers' are on the list. Think its time to draw up a legal disclaimer and make them read it first !

Cheers

Mick

Good idea. When I tried to do a transfer service, which didn't go very well, I had something written up which included language about any tapes that might be "damaged". Also you might want to put in disclaimers about:
1. whether the DVD+-R's work, being that not all dvd players work well with dvd recordable media. Someone might say it's bad, it just might not work on their player. I think I had something like 3 - 5 days for them to return the dvd if it did not work, after that too bad.
2. an advisory that dvd technology is still changing, as many have noted here. You think you have a good dvd/copy on supposedly good media, but 6 months or a year later, it's not so good or starts acting up.
3. an advisory on labeling. When I was going to try this, I decided that I would only label the discs with a dvd marker, only on the inner hub, or with hub labels (just from my own personal experiences with some of my dvd's I had previously labeled with full labels). Let them know if you don't and they decide to label it themselves, it could cause the disc to not work.