Here's a problem some may think isn't even possible. Here goes.
In the late 1990's, while copying a VHS tape from one AG-1980 VCR to another AG-1980, I think I mistakenly performed an insert-edit to the target tape rather than a straight copy. I thought the target tape had been previously striped (a blank video recorded on it) and it turns out that was not the case. The recording deck did what it was told to do, which was try to sync to the existing control sync track rather than lay down a new sync track. Since there was no control track to sync to on the target tape, that deck appeared to just record the source tape frame by frame to the totally empty tape. After the recording was complete, I set the finished tape aside without viewing it and returned the original tape to its owner. It wasn't until two years later when someone requested a copy of that tape did I discover my mistake. Upon viewing my copy from the original tape, the video flashed or pulsed frames of the original video on the monitor. I contacted the owner of the original tape but he said their tape had been recorded over.

Fast forward a few decades and while digitizing my huge collection of camcorder tapes, I came across the above copied tape.
Assuming I correctly defined the cause of my bad tape copy, how can I fix my problem and digitize that copy?
I'm thinking I need to either lay down a control track on the existing copy that syncs to the existing video (or vice versa) or possibly correct the lack of synchronization while digitizing it or in post after digitizing it.
I've thought about trying to dub the bad copy to a striped tape using the insert-edit feature on the AG-1980 deck but I suspect the source 1980 deck will go nuts trying to adjust its tracking to get the bad tape to track correctly. The last thing I want to do is be pushing the auto-tracking on my newly rebuilt decks to their limit by doing something I shouldn't.

Toward the end of the era when new VCR decks were being made, I recall one of the video magazines had a review article of a deck that mentioned it could fix or replace a bad control track. I've never been able to find out what model that deck was nor whether it would correctly solve my problem.

I 'd appreciate any input others may have regarding this.

Thanks.
Tim///