A viable alternative?

Having repaired a video tape, I'd feel inclined to then recopy it to a new tape, and perhaps archive it to DVD as well. I'd hate you to splice up a video tape, only to find that when the owner sticks it back in their machine, the crappy dirty heads snag on the splice, and they finish up chasing you for the cost of repair to their machine.

If you're going to get into this, you might want to consider cine to DVD conversions. It's fairly easy to do, using a projector, back projecting onto a small ground glass screen, and a video camera. You can then edit down on a PC, and burn the disc at the same time.

I understand that there is quite a demand for this type of service, and good money can be charged for it.

Arfa

These nasty little groundglass boxes give a center hot spot, dark corners, a fixed grain pattern, poor sharpness, etc. An ordinary projector gives an irritating flicker in the video, and speeds up the film objectionably if you use a variable speed projector to reduce the flicker.

Shameless plug: we make Tobin Video Transfer machines for doing this properly with no screen, mirror, field or closeup lens, second imaging lens, or shutter in most models. The running speed for normal film is

17.126 FPS for NTSC or 16-2/3 FPS for the PAL version. The catalog page is at .

income:

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Beta,

Cassettes? What are those?

Seriously, does anybody still use them? I don't think I've owned an audio tape player in close to 10 years, my nice Sony VCR has been collecting dust for over a year since the last time I remember using it, and I regularly see boxes of audio and VHS tapes up for grabs on craigslist. The technology is even closer to extinction than consumer electronics repair.

Whilst this technology is seriously on the decline, it's not quite true that nobody uses them any more. There's lots of material archived on these media and, whilst owners should transfer them to CD and DVD, they don't get round to it until they come to watch little Jimmy who died's third birthday party, and the tape breaks, or listen to that rare bootleg live tape of George and the Mudflingers at the Lower Bumstead Rock Festival of 1971, and it chews up in their machine ...

The OP is never gonna make a living at doing this, but if he gets known as a ' specialist ', it would likely bring in a bit more cash to add to his declining income.

I take the point that Clive makes about speed and flicker etc when transferring cine to DVD, and if you were going to do a lot of it, one of his products would be the way to go. However, I would also say that acceptable results can be achieved, with a little care, using basic cheap equipment that you may already have laying around. Most home cine films that I've seen, shot on standard or super 8, are a bit " Charlie Chaplin " anyway, so altering the speed a little to minimise flicker, is not that noticable.

Arfa

I'd say they'd likely try and fix the tape for maximum recovery of the data - not for re-use. Tapes are so cheap there's little point in fixing them apart for this.

And I'd *never* use a spliced tape in a VCR - the risk of head damage is too great to make it even remotely worth doing.

--
*Upon the advice of my attorney, my shirt bears no message at this time

    Dave Plowman        dave@davenoise.co.uk           London SW
                  To e-mail, change noise into sound.

The trick is to leave a bit of overlap (say, 1/16") facing in the direction of tape travel, that way the rotary head cannot get snagged. But I agree with another poster, spliced tapes are not wise to use and are best copied onto something else.

Fine until you do a reverse slo-mo. ;-)

Yup.

--
*I'm planning to be spontaneous tomorrow *

    Dave Plowman        dave@davenoise.co.uk           London SW
                  To e-mail, change noise into sound.

**I agree with Arfa. I have a lot of VHS tapes that I'm archiving and burning to DVD (though I wonder about burned DVD longevity). So, I think there are still reasons for VCRs to stick around. On this past trip back home to my parents, I found a cassette tape in the basement from 1976. I know my sister and I are on it but I'm not sure I should attempt to play it. I think we're singing "You Light Up My Life." :) Maybe I should burn it ;)

kaboomie

Any transfer tips? I just took the plunge and bought DVD-RAM drives for all the computers here, still haven't burned one yet but have several old videotapes I want to transfer. (Wish I had a TBC. Can't justify buying one for this, though.)

--
        If John McCain gets the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination,
           my vote for President will be a write-in for Jiang Zemin.

If you backup to CD / DVD write 2 copy's and copy annually The dyes fade and any damage to the TOC makes the disk scrap. Remember a damaged tape can be spliced a damaged disk can be binned! John.

**Hi Clifto. I have a standalone recorder, a Panasonic e85. It has a hard drive. I have a Sony Vaio that can also burn DVDs but I don't use it. After much research, I decided that PC burning would be such a time-consuming pain in the butt that I bought the standalone.

I'm not dissing using the PC in any way, it offers you many more options than standalone burning. It's just that I don't have enough time and using the Panny is pretty easy and it doubles as a DVR. I'm only on the Vaio for a few hours everyday and I don't want it to be hung up encoding or some other option like running the vid thru filters.

Do you have a good capture card and software? Good capture methods will save you time. Here's some info to make sure that your computer can handle it and that you eventually turn out a nice DVD:

Poke around the site for more info on all things digital.

As to the TBC: Are the tapes in such bad shape that you think you need one?

John is right where he writes that dyes fade. Be careful with the storage (most importantly, keep out of the light). If you are archiving some truly precious stuff, continue to save your VCR tapes! I look at burning to disc this way: Now I can view the program/event/etc as many times as I want without worrying about wearing out the original. And I can copy it more easily.

kaboomie

Do the dyes still fade even if the discs are stored properly? I plan to archive some old family tape recordings to CD; some of the (plastic-based) tapes are over 40 years old, and I would hope a CD would last at least as long..... Seems to me TDK once had a CD-R that they claimed had an archival life of about 100 years (hence the slogan: "Which will last longer: you, or your data?". But maybe that's not true for every brand.....

Looks kewl, thanks!

No, but having worked with one in the past I know it always provides at least a little improvement.

--
        If John McCain gets the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination,
           my vote for President will be a write-in for Jiang Zemin.

check this out

now as the real test how do you go to the store and request one of these long life products....The sales clerk would only give you a blank stare and say "what?"