Treasured & Irreplaceable VHS Video

chrissa1 | 18:02 Thu 30th Sep 2010 | Technology

8 Answers

My sister has only one video of her wedding back in 1982. I am trying to persuade her to get copies for all the family put on DVD as it contains footage of our late parents etc.
She says that it has "white streaks" in between the coils of tape and is terrified of it being destroyed by some cack handed techno.
How can I persuade her to get it done and who are the best people to go to? Thanks.

Windows Mail ... Can't Attach Things

Compress video

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AlBags

If you have an editing type DV Camcorder, you can do it perfectly well at home.
Plug VHS to DV Cam with S leads and audio .. or at least scart. DV Cam output by firewire to firewire on pc. Start Windows Movie Maker, select Capture from video .. check out settings and import to PC. Do NOT have anything else running when capturing .. and make sure you have LOADS of spare HDD space!

chrissa1

Question Author

Thanks albags but I don't think she has one and it's the white streaks in it as it hasn't been viewed for ages. What do you think they could be?

AlBags

Probably oxidisation of the ferrous material in the tape. I expect the contents would be ok tho. Try the tape after a rewind and FFwd.

TheTruthHere

You may have a fungus on your tape

http://forum.videohel...532-Video-tape-fungus

keithlbw

This needs to be done soon , as the tape is obviously deteriorating with age.
I can understand your sisters reluctance to trust the tape to someone, but you need to explain if she doesn't the footage could be lost forever.

Answerprancer

LMAO "tape fungus" - sorry Chrissa, I'm not laughing at your situation, just the description from THH's link. (I hope you manage to restore it)

anotheoldgit

http://www.timeless-m...s.co.uk/html/vhs.html

I can highly recommend this company.

I have visited their premises personally and the equipment they possess is awesome.

Not only that but they are very nice people to talk to and they talked me through their process, which gave me much confidence to leave my treasured cine film with them for converting, I was highly delighted with the finished result.

chrissa1

Question Author

Thank you Very much aog, this looks perfect. I'm sure I can persuade my sister with this ammunition. Cheers.

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