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OT: Damaged VHS tape
I have been given an old VHS tape that has video of the women’s grandson on it when he was 1 year old (he is now 22). Anyway the tape was eaten by their player and the tape is actually torn into 2 pieces. Is there any way to “splice” this back together to capture the video to the hard drive? Any ideas?
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5 Replies
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There is special VHS splicing tape that you can buy along with a 1/2″ splicing block and a razor (Markertek maybe?).
However, when I’ve done this for anyone, I tell them to play the tape up to a point just before the splice, eject it, manually wind the tape past the splice and then play it again.
The reason for doing this is to avoid having the splice go past the video heads as there’s a chance that the splice wasn’t perfect and it could destroy the video heads as it goes past them. -
I’ll give that a try. Where can I get the splice kit, a camera store?
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I don’t know about a camera store but there’s one at Markertek for $28.00.
You might be better off to see if a local video production place or TV station has one and could do it for you. -
If you have never spliced video tape before I would take it to a professional. I have only worked with audio tape and for audio you must make a diagonal cut so that the splice does not get caught on the heads. Since video heads spin on an angle I have no idea if this works for video or not but if you don’t know what you are doing, chances are you will do the wrong thing. If you do try it, I agree with ejecting the tape before the splice and hand winding it past the splice just to be safe.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
I found a pro who could do it for $15. I’ll play it once more to capture to Vegas and make a DVD. Thanks for the advice.
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