A Recipe for Analog to Digital Video Transfer: Baking
The Race Against Time And The Ultimate Dropout…
Our friend Richard Wirth has a new article on how preservationists are reviving videotapes…at least long enough to play them through into a digital format. It is literally a “sticky business”, but thankfully there are people making the effort. Here’s a look at how they are making the old tape stock playable again.
http://provideocoalition.com/pvcexclusive/story/a-recipe-for-analog-to-digital-video-transfer-baking
A Recipe for Analog to Digital Video Transfer: Baking
We had a project come to us recently that required the transfer of ¾ inch videotape to digital files. To those for whom analog videotapes have become a mysterious relic akin to Egyptian hieroglyphs, let it be known that much of our cultural heritage still exists only on this medium.
I remember tape all too well! All of the formats in fact!!!
Our Local station (CJOH) had been pushing for a budget to transfer their news archive to digital, when there was a fire that destroyed the building. Nothing was apparently salvageable.
All of my 200 or so of my personal VHS tapes look as good today as they did when I first recorded on them in the early 1980s, many at the LP or SLP speeds. Keeping them in an air-conditioned environment, storing them vertically in a box or sleeve and occasionally fast-forwarding and rewinding them is the secret to their success.
I am one of those “working out of their homes”. Although I work under the auspices of our local Media History Foundation, there isn’t really a budget for preservation (it mostly goes for acquisition) so I pay out of pocket for functioning U-Matics and the like. We have a great space at our local Library for research and display of our collection, but no room for what I do. Our local University has a set up for baking our tapes…
What great machines they were.
Ampex 1200’s. Know them well.
Could this possibly work for mid 80s-era VHS tapes?
At my previous job We had 2″ Quad tape that showed the “print through” effect, but just in the chroma, and we had a couple of those reels with the foam inside with the adhesive that would liquefy and gunk up the tape. =:|
I know my old station is sitting on old films and tapes, and only allowing an office secretary or intern to attempt copying to digital. Very haphazard in my opinion as to QC.
I have an old 3/4 inch tape that I am sharing with a local archivist and he was telling me about this process. He uses a food dehydrator for the process he bought at a department store! Pretty amazing!
I couldn’t tell you about video tape, but I can talk about data, mag-tape. The same thing happened to tapes we had written in the mid-1980s, and tried to read in the mid-2000s. Meanwhile, the cheap, little Radio Shack, three-pack cassettes bought in the early 70s, and stored in less than ideal conditions, are still playing 40 years later.
Those are very rare AMPEX VR1100’s. You can tell by the control panel. Not a 1000. Not a 1200/2000.
It’s sad that a tape made in 1996 is showing signs of sticky shed syndrome!
It amazes me how many stations seem to value their news archives, yet don’t seem to care enough to even try to digitize them and think that they can just keep fixing the one 3/4″ deck left in the building forever.
Sticktion!!