Anyone know about video's ?

[wonwinglo]

I have an old normally trusty video machine in my workshop,today it started jumping all over the place so I tried the tracking but to no avail,next I purchased one of those head cleaner tapes but that does not seem to have made any difference ?

Is there anything that I can do or check to get it working again properly,or is it time to ditch it ?,I must say that the tracking knobs have never been very good but normally sorted out any jumping of the tape.

Anyone out there able to advise me please,thank you.

[Guest]

I tried head cleaning tapes and wasn't all that impressed with them. I opened up the vcr and, using a cotton bud and either meths or IPA cleaned the playback/record drum, making sure that I didn't touch it with my bare fingers. Agood clean out of the dust etc often does wonders too.

[wonwinglo]

Thanks Kiwi,I tried this and there is some improvement,I agree about those head cleaners they only half do the job and drag more dirt across the drum,at least the bottle of ISP supplied came in handy to do the manual clean with a lint free cloth.

[wonwinglo]

http://www.fixer.com/osm/cleaning.html

Good article here for anyone with similar problems.

[Guest]

might be a good idea to get a new one before you cant get them any more

[wonwinglo]

might be a good idea to get a new one before you cant get them any more

***Is it really that bad Iain ? I have noticed a degradation of some of my carefully stored tapes which are 15 years old and more,after all we are dealing with magnetism and as we know that disperses with age.

Will CDRom discs have better archival qualities ? I hope so.

[Guest]

Sorry Barry but the heads do degenerate also the heads are not the drum but the tiny slivers of metal at the bottom! thats why the drum is offset so they scan the whole tape area With regard to the tapes they will fade over a period of years (sorry ) and there aint nothing you can do apart from running the progs thru a pc and using video software to try and clean them up a bit. But just remember the old Hi Fi saying "rubbish in rubbish out". just transfer them to dvd or cd using divx to compress and they will keep for years:goodluck:

[wonwinglo]

I had no idea that you could transfer them to DVD Nigel,I think that it is no more video's but only DVD in the future,just brought 'Flight of the Phoenix' DVD what a classic to watch again and again and see the details of how it was made.I notice that the tapes stretch as well rendering them useless,that old advertisement by Scotch which said 'record again not fade away' was wrong,they do certainly fade,lets hope that DVD's will last a lot longer,apart from scratches they should be fine,am I correct in saying that ?

[Guest]

yes mate yhey have a thin silver layer that the laser burns through (its binary code) so they last for ever the only prob is the medium becoming scratched or damaged which prevents the laser from reading

[Guest]

I pick

[Guest]

i can get you a dvd player writer for £79.99 maybe less if you want(this is a stand alone unit for the tv not the pc)