VHS Tapes to Digital - preserving my childhood

A tragic tale of archiving and spending lots of money for the finest quality analogue pixels. If you have VHS tapes to convert, be warned that the process is dark and full of terrors.
0:00 - Intro
0:36 - Heading for the Best Source
1:19 - Deinterlacing
3:23 - TBC
4:05 - Buying better equipment
6:01 - Upscaling VS reality
6:34 - Post-process editing effects
7:52 - PC POWER
9:27 - Encoding!

[@hisshame]

Philip is the definition of knowing it’s “good enough” but rolling your eyes and going back in because it could be a little bit better

[@zaidlacksalastname4905]

Extremely accurate. Perfectionist to death

[@WangleLine]

Oh yes

[@digojez]

Philip inner monologue leaked: "It's probably good enough" "are you sure it's good enough?" "..."

[@gale7682]

"It's good enough." "Or is it?"

[@eee1200]

Relatable

[@lage__]

Did your life *flash* before your eyes?

[@Nykomil]

You didn't have to do him like that...

[@KasposkoZ006]

I didn't expect Puss in Boots reference here.

[@kadugbuss]

But is it now, time to die?

[@LLPTV]

the joke that made him change the title

[@Nykomil]

@@LLPTV I just noticed LOL

[@pacotesan]

When my grandpa died years ago, I found myself feeling so sad, that I created this project to get all our VHS tapes (that my father, fortunately recorded each year, xmas, fathers/mothers day, birthdays etc) and did the same thing you did. (Even bough a modified VHS player that would clean the old tapes) And at the end it felt so good to get the family together to watch it all. And it really helped me seeing hours and hours me with my grandpa that I still miss so much.

[@thebackburner79]

Was in a similar situation. There was only one tape, taken by my grandfather, thanksgiving 1992. The only thirty minutes of him, as my mother remembered him, preserved in video. I went through the same rabbit hole, just to save these 30 minutes, and packaged it for all my aunts and uncles.

[@spyor1]

My favourite KZbinr posts once again, I wish I could see how many years I’ve been subscribed to you Philip, been a long time running. I’m loving the direction your videos are taking as of recent, very informative and interesting topics!

[@Cyphco]

I really love watching those "obsession" videos, i always have the same feeling when programming and trying to get weird ancient stuff to run, after you are done it feels like you archived something great yet there is nobody to appreciate it, i love being able to be happy for someones obsession ^^

[@xatoor]

@@leograss2 A great way to say it!

[@ogonbio8145]

I got the gta iv pc port running at playable fps on my OG Toshiba laptop. I was using dxvk before it was cool

[@Catzzye]

Also, we had our tapes digitised by a pro when I was younger so I didn't have a chance to experiment with it, what we got is the best that it will ever be. Even tho it's not perfect, my family is just happy that it exists in the first place. Don't worry yourself too much with details, just it being there readily available for your family is a great achievement for them and they'll appreciate it in time

[@Fortzon]

@@2kliksphilip If KZbin crashes and burns in the future, you can open up Philip's Home Video Transfer Ltd. 😂

[@psychonauts0]

@@2kliksphilip we offer that service where I work, I guess now that you've done it yourself you can probably see why it's so expensive :P lucky we don't get many orders for that kind of thing, we only usually get a few tapes to do a year

[@KingLich451]

@@Fortzon or a VHS Repair shop... Maybe named Lightning Fast VHS Repair? 😃

[@ThisUsernameSystemF-ckingSucks]

@@KingLich451 Those guys are a bunch of hack frauds.

[@drfsupercenter]

@@psychonauts0 My local library has a free "digital workshop" with a VHS player, camcorder, audio cassette player and a couple other things (like a scanner for scanning 35mm film). You can use it for free, you just bring your analog material and a hard drive to store the files on and the rest is provided for you. Hopefully that becomes a thing at more libraries...

[@brownpaste]

i am only days away from undertaking this challenge myself. great timing!

[@republiquarry3512]

I too have a box of tapes in the corner of my room, staring at me to finally digitize them, except I've been avoiding it for... god, months? at this point. I really should get to it, sooner or later. ... ehhhh... A bit more waiting can't hurt, right?

[@natchyocheeze3922]

@@2kliksphilip would you be willing to sell your TBC VHS player once your done with it? Happy to pay whatever you think it's worth.

[@SgtBurned]

Phillip, Amazing work. I loved that you kept the VHS style to the videos and not upscaling / filtering the images. Footage looks great and definitely brought back some nostalgia.

[@Mr-Tibbster]

I had to experience the sadness of losing all my baby and childhood videos when the VHS tape we had years ago was accidentally taped over for an episode of "buy or not to buy".

[@azwb]

All your baby and childhood videos fit on 1 tape?

[@Mr-Tibbster]

@@azwb Yes, not much was recorded, as my family weren't the filming kind. There was roughly 5-10 minutes of me as a 1 year old at my grandmother's recorded by my grandfather, and then a further 20-25 mins of some footage of a house party recorded also by my grandfather of me when I was 4 years old. Nothing else was ever filmed of me that young, but plenty of photographs.

[@MEGAtheguy]

I love that Philip was able to experience the classic "hit it to make it work" technique for old tech. Still works to this day

[@drfsupercenter]

Until it makes it worse :D Seriously, hitting it only works when there's a loose wire, but hit it too much and the wire falls off, then you're screwed.

[@boredPianoAdv]

This video hits all the right spots for me - the niche problem that only a few people can appreciate, detailed hardware and software analysis, rabbit holes, makeshift compromises, and of course the agony of how you always could've done it b e t t e r Thank you for posting this, and I hope you can recover from its terrors!

[@Sir-Prizse]

2:27 Took me a couple of seconds to realize that Philipp is running around with a balaclava and a M4 carabiner as a kid… I am so used to see him do strange things, I don‘t even notice it anymore when something is really disturbing.

[@Mandarin9900]

1:26 Daily reminder of what pure evil looks like (and I also really want this balaclava without holes and with same colours to be added to the game, any workshoppers?)

[@Supwisebs]

carbine, not carabiner

[@stuffenjoyer2223]

He was indoctrinated to play counter strike as a child

[@userequaltoNull]

​@@Supwisebs he might be German.

[@LinusBoman]

Oh god, I went through this palaver myself back at the start of the pandemic. Thankfully my folks only kept about a handful of VHS tapes but I sank an unreasonable amount of time into that project and didn't get anywhere near the quality that you seem to have. Thanks for sharing your process!

[@insu_na]

Percussive maintenance saves the day again

[@natchyocheeze3922]

I went down this rabbit hole, I completely understand how frustrating the whole process can be, I got burnt out after weeks of troubleshooting, hope to go back to it soon. Thanks for the tips Philip.

[@DreamyCecil]

I really adore your motivation to put so much effort into what you want to achieve. This specific video invokes familiar feelings in me even though I don't have as many early video recordings. I'm obsessed with preserving as much of my life as possible, even if I don't think of it in the moment. Still, this video motivated me to dig up old dusty CDs with recordings from my childhood and back them up digitally, so thank you for that

[@Poodle666]

Your the only content creator I feel connected to somehow. Such a genuine guy and the archiving and display of your life’s journey even before KZbin is so unique!

[@sattmowards]

You're*

[@durchfaII]

@@sattmowards you must have many friends in real life

[@sattmowards]

@@durchfaII Thanks man

[@Poodle666]

@@sattmowards I actually love this lmao, KZbin never changes and that kinda makes me happy. Your a legend!

[@filipfriday]

Hi there, Philip! I’m surprised that I came across a video about preserving VHS tapes the same day I decided to begin my own process for my family videos. This video was excellent, and eased my anxiety surrounding the project. Obtaining the necessary hardware of course will take time, but in the meantime I can scroll through the endless forum posts much like you did I’m sure ;). Thanks for putting this together and hoping that your footage turns out great!

[@krizalllid]

I had my parents' VHS tapes converted to DVD in 2005 by Jessops. A few years ago I ripped the discs and put them up on Google photos and called it a day. I haven't got the patience or skill to improve the footage so props to you Phillip. I'm hopeful that some years from now there'll be one great software program that does everything for you with minimal effort. The original tapes will likely be dead at that point though.

[@hedgeearthridge6807]

Data archival is gonna be a big thing for our generation, and we have to teach our kids how to store data properly, it's only going to become more important over time. Too when we're gone, our efforts to store our data won't go to waste because our kids don't bother to learn how to access it. And that way we can use better filesystems like ZFS or BTRFS to prevent bit-rot, rather than only using FAT32 or NTFS to keep things dumbed down. When I have a family the amount of data i have is going to exponentially increase. Pictures and home videos, this time digital instead of on floppy disks and VHS. I'm already too archiving data from my parents who don't have the technological know-how to do it right, and I worry that if something happens to me they won't know how to access it (I've tried teaching, it's futile, I may have to write and print emergency documentation).

[@flintfrommother3gaming]

My dad lost all of my first day CDs because of my dad giving them to a re*ard who accidentally formatted the drives. I know there are ways to recover them but we already lost the CDs and to be honest I couldn't care less. I mean good and all but I don't really miss them compared to my already intact 4-3 years old videos and photographs. I also have a much smaller first day photo collection of 2 I think which is enough.

[@drfsupercenter]

​@@flintfrommother3gaming Formatting...CDs? What? Are you talking about CD-RW? Because otherwise that makes zero sense.

[@Malkovith2]

It's good that you archived your efforts to solving this very specific problem here on youtube

[@jtr8784]

5:00 I just want to say how happy it makes me to see you still have the Inspiron. That was my first proper PC (upgrading from my mom's old laptop lol) after seeing your sponsored video showcasing it. Its such an awesoke computer. I've since upgraded, but it got passed down to my little brother as his first PC (upgrading from my mom's laptop lol).

[@sgas]

7:17 That's such an awesome thing to mention

[@Ace123]

Was just capturing my first of many VHS tapes at the very moment this video popped out. What a timing. Thanks for this!

[@BebxOfficial]

i love this video. archival is such an important practice and seeing you go through so much effort to make sure its being done as perfectly as possible with as much information kept as possible is glorious. EVEN IF YOU HATE YOURSELF FOR GETTING INTO THIS BECAUSE ITS SO MUCH EFFORT FOR NO REASON. so yeah. even though its like. not at all my footage or anything lol it still makes me so happy that you're archiving it, so thanks for doing it !!!

[@enerjustics]

Recommendation to also keep the version of Vegas you've used to create your project files on the backup to avoid any unforeseeable incompatibility issue with future releases

[@AMD2600]

And the rabbit hole can continue if one wants to analyze storage options. Bit rot is a rare, but possible, event where small portions of data can become corrupt. This usually comes in the form of a bit flip somewhere on the filesystem. Given how small a video or picture file header is to the rest of the data portion of the file, the odds are that it will affect the data portion. What that effect looks like to the viewer is a graphical artifact such as the colours getting all wonky half way through. This is where having a proper storage setup is key. Not just using multiple disks in RAID, but also having a filesystem that does proactive integrity checking to ensure no data had been unexpectedly altered. For that there are solutions such as ZFS, which performs similar functions as a RAID, but also offers a filesystem with integrity checking and correction with its "scrub" feature. Anyways... Cool video! Reminds me that I need to eventually digitise my family videos and pictures...

[@TiborSzarvas]

You are truly a mad lad in the best sense! I really like the lesson you learned at the end of the video. It is similar in a lot of areas in life. I find myself hard not to go down every rabbithole there is, fixing a car the most proper way for example. In the end it is better to fix/restore a car Before you lose all your motivation and sanity and the project is never finished. So yes, finishing something with bearable, decent results is always better than not finishing it ever. Thanks for the videos Philip. Also, lovely jubbly cat you got!

[@Garry1247]

This is major, Thanks Philip, for years I've been planning out how I can digitise my families massive plastic tub of mini dv tapes into video files. Your video should really help me

[@djjudd566]

It's so crazy that you've been doing this recently. We really are all living the same lives. The simulation must be trying to save on computation. I have also been going down all the same rabbit holes recently.

[@chaohord]

Love to follow you down these rabbit holes, I've got my own stack of tapes that need backing up someday, hopefully this vid will help me then

[@Kosik3]

Welp Im now motivated to preserve my family memories, while looking through forgotten VHS tapes I've seen many family members that already passed out and how happy all was on grills or family comings :) Thank you.

[@ded5351]

I don't have anything special to say, just that I always enjoy your content and so on

[@charliemullineaux3534]

I thoroughly enjoyed this video

[@BearFOXThirty]

Can't believe you made a video showing both Hybrid and QTGMC, I've felt so alone in it's use for some deinterlacing projects until now. Thank you Philip, I'm glad to have at least your confirmation that I've been doing things slightly good 🤣 Also seeing VHS tapes with TBC, I never knew they actually had quality that good. Mad!

[@mpolikk]

That's exactly why we love you and your content.

[@christopherstein2024]

This video will be a heaven for future pilgrims.

[@Kpub44]

Thank you Philip you are an inspiration

[@nepdisc3722]

you're doing a good and meaningful thing never give up

[@sailents7352]

good luck philip, you are doing great

[@YouTubeDoesntSupportMyUsername]

Baby Philip walking into the glass door is the purest essence of home videos

[@hisshame]

6:30 Philip suddenly makes a lot more sense

[@Veptis]

I did that for my grandpa a few years ago. More than 20 hours of videos my grandpa produced on me and my brothers growing up. I didn't care about compression or deinterlacing at the time and haven't since. Never even retouched them. Or even fixed the illegal data rate that I could recover. You can see the YUV signal is Resolve, it has color in most blow out bits and it does work. The data is there. You simply don't see it with default rec709

[@SP95]

Thanks for documenting your research

[@Jack-jq4if]

My dad did this to our old VHS tapes a few years ago and now that I saw your video. I am going down memory lane once again and it's a sweet road

[@noamias4897]

I had a customer come into the electronics store I worked at repeatedly buying stuff for this same thing throughout some months. Like every retailer they had moved from more specialized electronic accessories to more mainstream stuff, but ours was unpopular so we had a few dusty old pieces of tech left that he’d want to look at. Learned a lot and had some nice discussions with him on otherwise uneventful days, I doubt he’ll find this video but I’m sure he’d enjoy seeing it

[@Acer0c]

Was literally just talking about old VHS tapes with my mom, checked KZbin to see this uploaded before we even spoke about it, what bizarre timing. ;)

[@polygonerror]

great video love this sort of stuff

[@georgejpg]

Every time I watch one of your videos I find myself pausing the video, scrolling out of fullscreen to give you a like, just to realise I already did that a few minutes ago. Today it was the zoom on David's junk at 6:27

[@thorn9382]

The videos Philip makes about random life stuff are the best imo

[@leonbuday1345]

Ahhh I was waiting for this!

[@Bella1899]

Thank you so much for this video

[@BlueTJLP]

This is really awesome to see you preserve these memories hopefully for a long long time. One thing I saw was that you bought two of the same external hard drive, maybe even in the same order. If these are from the same batch, there is a larger chance that the drives both fail at a similar time. I would recommend buying a different second drive to maximize your chances of preservation, just to be extra safe

[@leonard_roy]

nice work. i have some experience in transferring vhs tapes. so far QTGMC Placebo and Topaz VEAI (Strong) Dehalo to 720p with some pop sharpening afterwards worked pretty well for me. paints a nice image from like 90% of the visible detail, while getting rid of the noise quite effectively. If you want to further indulge in lossless vhs transfer, have a look into vhsdecode. It's an open source project, recording the raw headdrum output signal without interpreting to video and appling lookahead time base and other corrections in post. So far there is a lack of content covering vhsdecode on KZbin. also my raw transfers are in DV Format (lossy) and compress quite well with 7z.

[@henrikskjolden]

"interlazing is pure evil" truer words have never been spoken..

[@brunnen153]

Burning out because you turn a simple task into a gigantic undertaking by going down every rabbit hole imaginable. It's so hard to avoid, one second you are motivated to make it perfect, the next you dread every little thing but you're in too deep to back out at that point.

[@Matticitt]

The difference between those two different playes is amazing. I wouldn't've expected that.

[@annezwart5083]

Thank you for sharing your preservation journey! Though videos like these might not reach the same size audience as the ones covering new tech I do think they're very interesting. And who knows; you might've inspired or helped some people to do the same.

[@micnolmadtube]

Been going down the hole for old dias pictures, around 1500 or so. Got a nikon ls-50 ed, had a few 5000 listings but they got bought up so fast I never got in before it was gone. Went through a few cases before I found out I could improve the quality even more but not so much anyone would ever notice, so I deleted it all and started over. And then there is the whole file system and folder and file naming thing... pure joy and fun...

[@yom35]

always a good day when 2klikphillip upload :D

[@ChronicWhale]

You've inspired me to archive a bunch of mini dv cassettes, thank you, maybe they would have been lost forever one day

[@ogonbio8145]

I love this stuff

[@ineligible2267]

My family doesn't really have any VHS tapes lying around but these kinds of archival projects are nice to see, on a much smaller and simpler scale I've backed up digital photos of our old pets so we can look back on times with them

[@helloeverything496]

I have heard you can directly rip the analog data signal from a vhs tape by soldering two wires to a head test point. That way you get only what the heads read, bypassing whatever the vhs player does after that to the signal so you can do it better yourself (and be able to redo all of it in the future if better technology comes). Also buying a small nas and running those drives in raid 1 seems like a good idea.

[@JustLukeMinecraft]

Congratulations on finally doing this. It's one of those projects few people ever get to. The tapes are still looming somewhere in a closet over here

[@lodewykk]

11:54 - best bit of advice in the entire video

[@Capturing-Memories]

Good job.

[@rossren9691]

Nobody has said it so I will.....I love the music you use in your videos just as much as the video itself

[@spectrobit5554]

As a data hoarder, I often wonder how much of what is being stored will never be intentionally seen again. This is specially true for porn and petty content, but also for things like this. "Everything not saved will be lost" is carved in my soul, yet it is also a painful reminder of how much will still be lost... even worse, not missed.

[@alexstone691]

Finally someone who does not like their cpu running at 100c for a long time

[@DarkSwordsman]

Ayy! I know about Vapoursynth from the anime encoding scene, where they will clean up even the highest quality anime from blu ray into even higher quality using lots of math and filters and such. Glad to see Anisynth/Vapoursynth getting more exposure!

[@avena-]

this is so cool.

[@asphere8]

You're probably one of the top experts in the world on how to do this now

[@JohnMichaelBradley]

I jumped down that hole last year, and I'm glad I did. Besides the dozens of home videos I was able to preserve, I also had a few things on VHS that simply can't be found anymore. There's a lot of obscure content that can live on on KZbin because obsessive nerds like us make it possible.

[@JohnMichaelBradley]

And in the spirit of sharing, I used a Panasonic PV-S7670 SVHS VCR fed through a Panasonic DMR-ES15 DVD recorder into a Hauppauge 610 USB digitizer. It isn't professional, but it worked well enough for me within my budget.

[@simonreij6668]

Nice one brother

[@dot32]

i clicked for the cat, stayed for the story

[@nullstress]

I love how Phil doesn't leave any stone unturned; he leaves no stone unspent.

[@duckyblender]

Hey philip, you can save those massive files using AWS S3 Deep Glacier, it costs $1/TB/Month and it's great for archiving stuff like this! The only downside is that you need to wait a bit before retrieving them + there is a small retrieval fee but that's it!

[@WelshProgrammer]

AWS, Wasabi or any other block storage provider that offers archival would be a great first step. Then there's always BluRay XL M-Disc which have an estimated 100 year storage lifespan. Flash drives if unused may lose data after 5+ years so they're not great for long term storage.

[@WelshProgrammer]

@@TheRealHarrypm I had no idea about vhs-decode, I see that you're a contributor on the GH repo, I'll take a look into it, thanks for bringing it to my attention.

[@SolomonsProxy]

Uploading personal files directly into the Chinese Communist Party might not be the best idea.

[@Fruitloopins]

this was super interesting

[@Niker107]

Compressing a 7-minute video down to just 30 MB with seemingly such well-kept quality feels like a miracle! What settings / encoder did you use? I've watched and rewatched your old H.265 videos and have been using H.265 myself for all my video compression, but since it's been a fair few years since those, have you changed your approach to compressing videos? I'd be very curious to hear.

[@kipchickensout]

it was a very interesting video and i might go back to it if i ever need to digitise something, as a starting point

[@thebackburner79]

Philip discovers the agony that retro tech collectors go through daily Godspeed, philip. Great job as always!

[@ricardo-kf1oq]

wow. hearing all these terms gave me a good surprise as I have a sony handycam (not a vhs but still analog footage) and dabble in a little glitch art with CRT Tv's . never thought I would hear philip would talk about this, good vid :D.

[@ricardo-kf1oq]

Also I would watch out for those hard drives. Idk about those but my Seagate Portable Extension HDD has had some people frustrated with their issues of breaking. Idk if this is a widespread issue with other HDD products but it's better to be safe than sorry!

[@asOCiATE53]

Good Job

[@B5DIN]

Oh dear... I've been doing the same the whole January! IT'S BEEN A RABBIT HOLE, yes. Digitising my VHS tapes, rescuing rotten DVD camcorder recordings, recovering old dying HDDs for photos... but mainly scanning around 1300 photos around our house and photographing my arts. Using 300dpi with my Epson V37 CCD scanner is the rescuer. I could've digged up the 35mm negatives, yes. I could've streamlined it. I could scan it in 600dpi. I could get something faster and practical. But I don't care. I just wanted it all done and saved from a housefire or something. Fitting it into 15 GB is sure gonna be a challenge. Being used to compressed video, I had no issue Handbraking 8000kbps interlaced videos into 2500kbps 50fps videos. And batch-IrfanViewing all my photos to set JPEG size (mostly 750kb) if that means preserving them in the worse case whatsoever. Better crusty than burned. Tip for cheaper TBC, btw! Get a DVD recorder with inputs and use that as a passthrough TBC. I use a second-hand Panasonic DMR-EX773 connected to my Panasonic NV-HV61 VCR (has no TBC, it's a budget model), and I'm happy with the results. Better than straight out the VCR :D Using an S-Video adapter also helps with quality (my AverCapture does have true S-Video, thankfully)

[@B5DIN]

Also - For photo scanning I use NAPS2, then exporting to uncompressed 300dpi TIFF. I align the photos on the flatbed so I can batch-crop them in IrfanView. Successfuly mind you, I got them all done now! Waiting for JPEGification :D The odd and unrotated ones out though? I use MS Office Picture Manager for cropping and rotating. It's UI is good for me, though I don't know any better :P And Photoshop is too slow. For VHS', I use OBS with Yadif2x turned on and some random AverMedia C039 capture card (a cheap HDMI to USB adapter would make a better picture for less, though...). 768x576, 50FPS (PAL here - yes I stretched the 720 horizontal lines out with Lanczos). Audio at 160kb/s AAC, video at 8000kbps. Do you have any suggestion? Maybe I could do something better?

[@Siger522]

Coincidentally, I finally digitized my tapes this month, too. Good thing I knew FFmpeg and all that stuff, otherwise I'd have to enjoy the 25 frame/s MP4s Elgato's GUI tool produces.

[@Halvkyrie]

Quite interesting video! I'm going through a bit of the same myself. I'm at the "I've bought the equipment to digitize the tapes some years ago but I haven't done anything with it yet" part...

[@Gr3gl_]

Reading the title I thought of some strange challenge of trying to fit as much of "you" as possible onto a flash drive so if a random person found it they'd know who "you" were

[@orimoreau3138]

8:48 "Otherwise I feel like I am the bottleneck" lmao what a guy

[@orimoreau3138]

@@2kliksphilip I refuse to elaborate further

[@michahojwa8132]

Thank you for your Vaillant fight

[@saphricpcgaming5182]

Big "Hal fixing a light bulb" energy.

[@patrlim]

nice to see you still using the inspiron from the sponsorship from way back when

[@patrlim]

@@2kliksphilip I'm just glad it's not e waste, good thing that silicon is being put to use!

[@connorkapooh2002]

Convolutions are used quite a lot within image processing and computer vision - it's like being able to aggregate sections of the image together, weighting it based on characteristics you are usually trying to work out (a la convolutional neural networks). In this case it eliminated the zig-zagging for you because its pulling out the key features of the pixels. Typing this out has actually helped me with my own dissertation...

[@connorkapooh2002]

It would also be interesting if you could then take your videos and run it through whatever model to regenerate them as though they'd been recorded with contemporary cameras (different aspect ratio, maybe even audio generation) -> I predict this is feasible within the next 2 years, if not already

[@DiscoBallGaming]

I'm glad your archiving these, VHS Tapes are horrible and it's amazing to me there was ever an era where they made sense. I'm glad your digitizing it, it can be archived forever now

[@Petch85]

Good job. Maybe a museum would like a copy, I guess there is a shortage of good quality VHS home tape recordings out there.

[@holliscrane4644]

best youtuber no contest. where did you come from phillip

[@nezu_cc]

As someone who went though this about 2 weeks ago, it's nice seeing I'm not the only ones obsessed about quality. If I were you i would upload the video files to a cloud backup solution (remember the 321 backup rule). They are pretty cheap nowadays, about 5$/TB/mo

[@imadecoy.]

I went through all of this about 2 months ago and agree with your conclusions. Some footage still hasn't been recovered and may not be as it seems the old camcorder had misaligned heads in its final year and that is very difficult to fix on already recorded footage.

[@imadecoy.]

@@2kliksphilip Absolutely. The important bit is the memories were saved. Or most of them at least.

[@L5GUK]

Take heart in the fact that you are one of very few people on the planet of over 6billion who knows what you know. And it is practical knowledge too.

[@pointblank2890]

I remember someone on r/datahoarder warning about the pitfalls and rabbit holes of digitizing VHS tapes, and I never knew I'd see the madness be shown to me by the philip himself

[@hoverbike]

Methylated spirits are fine for internal cleaning. It leaves an extremely thin film, that in the correct light, will refract light in a rainbow like spectrum. Using isopropyl alcohol is more important on areas that are actually visible, like keyboards and (warning: do this at your own risk!) monitors, though they may have an anti-glare coating, which alcohol usually ruins.