Brain dump from video transfer business: Tape problems & what can be done.

[@ihartmacz]

This was one of the most informative videos I have seen on KZbin. Thank you very much for sharing!

[@alphabeets]

Wow! What a fantastic video. Thank you so much.

[@frankowalker4662]

Lots of handy hints and information. Thank you.

[@TigerBoyRS]

Thank you for all that knowledge sharing. Been through the TV broadcast industry since the late 80s. Still love tape! Cheers 🇵🇹

[@JacGoudsmit]

You should make a video about what time base correctors do, how they help with specific problems, how the controls influence the handling, etc.

[@video99couk]

I did cover a certain amount of that in this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fJ7ReWR5bJKljJI I have so much back catalogue to wade through!

[@jamesbennettmusic]

Cheap food dehydrators are often found in a round shape with trays that are conveniently perfectly sized for 10.5" spools!

[@Witheredgoogie]

Well, you have confirmed something that I thought I was imagining - tape fade (low RF). In my modest experience, I found it was a creeping phenomenon IE it was always worse at the beginning but would improve steadily depending on how far it had got. You would not notice it much on say a head and shoulders shot except in the facial detail, but information cluttered scenes like landscapes it was more prominent.

[@billseery6758]

You're missing one. Loss of Lubricant (LOL) which is common with Metal Evaporated HI8 tapes and other formats. You mentioned SSS with 8mm but what you're seeing is more likely LOL. Baking will only make it worse.

[@NJRoadfan]

Early 90s Sony MP and ME 8mm tapes have lubrication problems. They are a royal PITA to transfer and cause clogged heads.

[@zx8401ztv]

I bet there are not many tapes that you havn't been able to recover. So many things can go wrong, it's amazing that tapes last at all really. As i've said before, the only tape that went funny on me was a BASF chrome one. Lots of dots appeared all over the whole of the tape on one side, but after being in a warm room for a couple of days they all vanished without any damage at all. Never happened on any other tape brand. And scotch " Re record not fade away " lol, just seemed eather too thick or stiffer than other tapes and could cause problems with some machines. The timebase corrector sounds like a life saver at times :-D

[@markpirateuk]

I had a few mouldy VHS tapes, my solution was to modify an old top loader so the tape cleaned itself against a length of optical cleaning cloth, all the tapes played fine after the treatment.

[@video99couk]

Nice solution. The old top loaders didn't do any partial lace-up during tape winding so are ideal for this sort of thing.

[@swilwerth]

Nice detail about the ringing of the umatic and the digital TBC suggestion 👌.

[@Robert_Wolf]

Hi Colin. Ive had good results getting rid of mold with using cotton wool balls held against the tape on modified scrap vhs and beta machines. Doesn't damage tapes as teh cotton woll is soft enough and also cleans the tape of debris. In an extreme situation I've even used cotton wool ball soaked in IPA to clean residue off tapes with a dry cotton wool ball to dry the tape off before it reaches the other spool.

[@video99couk]

The biggest problem though is mould on very thin tapes such as 8mm, where the mould is stronger than the tape. You can't easily get the tape off the spools without it snapping. Have to worked with mouldy 8mm?

[@Robert_Wolf]

@@video99couk Not done much with mouldy 8mm however I did one experiment with 60s audio reel to reel tape where the tape was stuck together with mould. As I had nothing to lose I put IPA into a roasting tin and then put the reel into the solution and moved the reel round a bit.. it did damage the reel plastic a little but it freed off the tape enough to unspool it onto a new reel (with cotton buds drying the tape off as it was unspooling). Drastic but remarkably effective at unsticking the tape.

[@vascooliveira6107]

I have several hi8 tapes that I recorded in my handyman between 1995 to 2004. Most of all Sony mp hi8 are still fine except the metal evaporated ones which now contaminate the heads, so I have continuously clean the heads during the transfer for dvd. I also have about 20 Maxwell hi8 mp tapes and all of them got a lot of mold. Most of all got ruined because tape snapped most of the time during the attempt of transfer. I have a few other brands including TDK Fuji and BASF with no problems at all. Curiously my Maxwell s-vhs tapes, about 35, were all contaminated with mold but fortunately didn't affect image in most of all of them.

[@vascooliveira6107]

I meant mould, not mold.

[@video99couk]

I have a technique for de-moulding 8mm tapes, but it's time consuming so a little expensive. Fuji branded tapes are usually the worst on 8mm. Head fouling on certain 8mm tapes can be hard to solve. When this happens with oxide tapes, some hours in a 50C oven usually stabilises them. But with 8mm metal formulation, tape baking is less effective, though still worth a try. Perhaps push it up to about 55C and leave them for 24-48 hours.

[@johnharmer394]

Thanks for your Videos, most instructional. Ive done transfers now for the last 3 years and have learnt a few new facts about some of the bad tapes I have encountered in the past. Love your Video on the Philips N1700; Ive got one these andwill at least have a look inside as it has issues; with the modules being Rusty.

[@video99couk]

Big KZbin video coming up on Philips stuff. Possibly the most important thing I've ever done....

[@mspysu79]

Another good video. In my experience (US) 3M U-Matic tapes do not have a lot of RF problems, but every AGFA tapeI have seen has low rf, and if you want real fun get a DuPont U-Matic tape, Low RF, Sticky shed, and if you are really lucky it's one of the super thin 90 min tapes (standard size) or 45 min tapes (S size). I have started to find sticky 1" C videotapes recently one was AGFA the other was random tape on a spot reel but looked a bit like 3M 479.

[@zuurbekje3125]

Thanks for another very informative video. Please keep them coming!

[@video99couk]

Glad you liked it. This one was actually quite a lot of work. Many more videos coming up, I'll never run out of ideas and brain dumps.

[@normstudio1]

Really great video. Thank you. Keep the good work.

[@DVDandFilmBloke]

I'm not sure what you would make of the method I use to clean mouldy VHS tapes. It basically involves holding some microfibre cloth (wrapped around some cotton buds) with a little bit of 70% IPA on it against the tape which is fast forwarded and rewound in a gash video recorder (making sure to clean both sides before they enter the heads) a couple of times in order to see if gunk stops coming off the tape and cleaning out the cassette with 99% IPA (in some cases I will manually go through the tape and remove some mould that is on the surface if there is any). From my experience it does the trick, I've not experienced any head clogs (or at least ones that required a head clean) and only a few mild drop outs every once in a while or so (which is normal for VHS especially if it's old or played a lot and some of the tapes which needed more vicious cleaning have more visible drop outs and playback problems), I'm always a bit afraid of the heads being contaminated and spreading to other tapes, I'm sure if the tape is as clean as I can get it and it plays well then I can safely assume it hasn't left anything nasty on the heads.

[@video99couk]

A few years ago, I would have said that IPA shouldn't be applied to tapes. But recently I've seen that it can be useful, so your technique sounds excellent. At least as good as a TapeChek and possibly better.

[@DVDandFilmBloke]

​@@video99couk I believe hydrogen peroxide actually kills the invisible spores where as IPA kills the mould which has already grown (so if the tape is returned to the conditions which allow the mould to grow it will grow back) however I've never tried it on VHS tapes and no one else to my knowledge has. People use IPA and I can tell it doesn't really if at all damage the tape, actually 70% I've found more effective and is a lot more gentle on the tape (which is good because there is usually some mould on the surface of the tape where it was wound to). I don't claim to have come up with the method myself, it actually came from the Lunchmeat VHS blog (there are tons of tutorials using that method), the idea of using 70% came from a video by "Devils Avalanche Films", the only thing I do is clean the surface of the tape where it was wound to before putting the tape in the machine to do the proper clean (that part is the worst job and in some cases I would have to cut the tape and splice it back onto the leader, since pretty much all the tapes I've cleaned are pre recorded I usually only lose a bit of the black screen before the warnings and openings and such). Also I tend to be a lot more thorough then others I've seen if I may say so myself since most people only tend to do 1 pass which knocks 90% of it off but I tend to do it 2 or even 3 times until it's all gone (also some tapes which had some heavy mould on the top edge can leave a visible stain which can be removed by basically drowning the top edge in 70% IPA and then giving the tape another clean after it's dried). I'm glad I found those tapes in my grandad's garage when I did since most had just started, if they were stored in there for another 10 years or so they might have all been unsalvageable.

[@simonstergaard]

Thankyou for the brain dump. Very interesting. If its folded, is it not possible to dump the raw data and use some software to extract the image data ?

[@NOWThatsRichy]

I may just be lucky but I have dozens of audio cassettes recorded as far back as I the mid 1980s, I've had no ageing problems with any of them, they still play perfectly & sound good as the day I recorded them, They are mostly TDK brand & been kept stored in a dry South facing bedroom, always been stored vertically too, this used to be recommended years ago too.

[@video99couk]

I've generally had less trouble with audio cassettes that with larger tapes, possibly because they're less likely to be stored in lofts or garages since they are small. But if a cassette were to go mouldy, it would be very hard or impossible to recover.

[@Super8Rescue]

The amount of Ampex I had from the 80s that is of no use today. Sticky Shed indeed. 100's of reels recorded on a Fostex R8

[@bananenbuurman]

Hi Colin, ever seen this phenomena? kzbin.info/www/bejne/e6WxqWl-fZilsMU I guess it's the caps leaking as i have this problem also on my BVW75 currently, what do you think?

[@video99couk]

If that was from BetacamSP, then yes capacitor problems are likely. May be in the power supply. There are other possible causes such as cabling or ground loops.

[@bananenbuurman]

​@@video99couk ​ It must be BetacamSP given the time and the look of the picture. Such a shame they did not see this error actually! But no one sees things like that these days it seems as most don't even care about interlaced videos on KZbin :D Your comment on the power supply is a very good hint and motivator to find this problem! Thank you! I visually inspected all the CAPS on all boards and found one leaking so I replaced the entire board with a spare with good caps, but the problem persisted so it must be the PSU as this one was too enclosed too look at, at that moment. So I will check again soon! You have a nice channel! I'm enjoying a lot of your content recently and already learned so much! I mostly enjoyed the d8/hi8 camera repairs. I subbed!

[@BoogWar01]

Great video. You seem to be an affable person and you drive an Avenger so I am thinking you might be amenable to a question or two. I am not into this stuff professionally but I do have a few machines lying around so occasionally I cobble then together in different configs to get a transfer done. My workflow involves getting the content into a PC using a Sony DSR-1500A DVCAM VTR's fire wire port (D/A converter). I have a problem not seen by me before: A VCR cassette with motorsport footage freezes frames while going through the Sony. It will play back fine if the VCR machine is connected to a TV. Can you shed some light on this?

[@ShadowArchive]

Thank you for this video.

[@1914grant]

Colin your top of my list of YouTobe videos i`m the exact same as you can`t get enough video recorders ha ha ha looking forward to your next video

[@video99couk]

The next video is taking a little time, but I think it will be very special. Of historical significance even...

[@SFtheGreat]

Do you have a video on demolding process? I run few cassetet tapes through toilet paper soaked in isopropanol, 3 cleaned fine, 3 were destroyed, but then again, I used a drill with a bic, so maybe it was too fast. My JVC can play most LP recordings in pretty acceptable quality, though I had some image problems on top and bottom of the image.

[@video99couk]

I do demonstrate cleaning Video8 and Betacam professional tapes on two YT videos, but I've not done VHS. Usually VHS will improve by just playing through a gash machine a few times, but you can get expensive "TapeChek" machines to polish the tape and I show that in another video:kzbin.info/www/bejne/q6C9YWmLiJWnrZY

[@musmodtos]

Apart from usual moudly bits - I seem to be having a run of misaligned audio, usually (for some reason) on VHS-C. I have a deck set aside now for problem VHS which is a free for all when it comes to adjustment, I just keep it solely for problem tapes - do you do something similar?

[@video99couk]

I do have something similar for Video8 and miniDV, but I've not had the need on VHS or Beta yet. I have a range of different machines and misaligned tapes will usually play on one or another. Long Play VHS tapes though can be a challenge. But anyone who was stupid enough to use VHSC Long Play for their precious memories was asking for trouble.

[@mayankmehta2761]

Sir can it be possible for you to share picture of sapphire Blade i will be obliged thank you

[@fredrikolsson6910]

I love your videos 🥰 you are amazing

[@instantwow]

Great video! I have a betamax tape that was recorded on iron oxide (brown) tape stock. When playing this tape, it quickly clogs the heads. Any thoughts on how to deal with a tape like this?

[@78bakelit]

You must use an Vacum +40C in an autoclave.

[@stickytapenrust6869]

What is it called when the rolls of tape are sticking together and you can hear it getting unstuck as the reel goes round but isn’t squealing as it goes through the tape path? Is that still SS Syndrome?

[@video99couk]

That's generally mould.

[@Capturing-Memories]

I've had a DAT with dry mould that kept snapping off, On the forth splice job I gave up and decided it is not worth the hassle.

[@video99couk]

I gave up with a mouldy DAT tape before even splicing it, clearly it was never going to run.

[@Capturing-Memories]

@@video99couk Yeah, That was a lesson I had to learn.

[@rsuryase]

TIL skew = back tension

[@Knaeckebrotsaege]

15:47 so what party did the tape go to to erase itself? 🤪

[@JohnnyBareToes1]

Very informative as always. I always learn something from your videos !