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jmac698
29th March 2010, 17:56
I am trying to capture a precious VHS that is 25 years old; actually it started degrading after only 3 years. It has several artefacts:
-white or black lines, 10-48 pixels long, 1 line high, which fade towards the right
-dots; white or black, significantly beyond surround pixels, 1 pixel high and 1/2 pixels wide
-noise bands, 4-10 pixels high, full width, pure b/w noise, slowly moves downwards for several frames
-color rainbows; not the cross-talk kind, just large vertical stripes, wide, of saturated colors such as green, yellow, magenta
-general luma/chroma noise
-unstable colors in some areas
-it is 29.97fps progressive

I've tried capturing on 3xVHS and 2xS-VHS; only one VHS was playable.
Why is the tape so noisy? I tried the "repacking" trick; there was no difference. The tape was not sticky, I read about binding hydrolysis. There is no bad smell of the tape. I see no visible kinks or creases in bad areas. Is there a VCR that can play this better? What is a cheap way of getting TBC - which DVD recorders or dual DVD/VHS decks have this? Are there any cheap Radio Shack/Walmart gadgets for this?

http://www.mediafire.com/file/zlyhntnmyon/noisyclip.zip

Ghitulescu
30th March 2010, 08:01
It think you posted twice the same thing -> http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=153698.

What is your PC setup? Try to "dedust" your tape, there are things like a FWD/REW tool but feature a cotton bud that clean the tape.