We’re often asked how long video tapes will last and if they’ll eventually stop working. As a business we’ve always avoided using what we see as scare tactics to sell the idea of converting old video tapes to a modern digital format. It’s a moral stance that we’ve adopted for a long time because we believe there’s nothing worse than pressure selling of any product or service.
In this article we will explain what really happens to old video recordings and the risks as we see them. It’s based on our own experience of working with thousands of tapes over the years.
We hope that after reading this you’ll have the information you need to make an informed decision about what to do with your old home videos. We value feedback and will be happy to address questions about the subject in the comments section below. We’ll update the article if readers think we’ve missed something out that they feel is important.
What exactly is a video tape?
Video tape is a long, thin piece of flat plastic with some oxide material glued on one side. It’s wound around reels in a moulded cassette shell housing that also has some tiny guide rollers along with a little pawl and ratchet mechanism. Some tapes like Video8 and MiniDV are slightly simpler and others are a bit more fiddly such as VHS-C.
Despite the notion that video cassettes are fragile things they all tend to work perfectly well almost all the time and continue to perform well decades after they were manufactured. There are a some things that do damage video tapes – you can prevent some of these things from happening. However, there’s a big gotcha that will mean your tapes might not be playable even if they aren’t faulty.
Contamination, mold, moisture and other damage.
Contamination – a big frightening word right there! Tapes can be contaminated when stored in a humid or damp environment like a loft or garage. This is becoming more common and we’re seeing a lot more of them than we used to do just a few years ago. It’s almost certainly a direct result of tapes being moved away from nice dry living rooms when householders ditched their VCRs several years. Most of the time recovery of mouldy tapes is possible but not always.
Most people are completely unaware that their tapes might be mouldy. Check yours by taking a close look at the edges of the reels through the little plastic window. If they’re affected then you can expect to see small splodges of dark spores or white dusty blobs.
Experience tells us that visual appearances can be deceptive. A tape that looks like the one pictured above may not present any real problems once cleaned. Yet a tape with a few barely visible dark spores could be beyond repair. The chances of recovery for either could be similar depending on how aggressive the spores are.
Some tapes can be affected by a sticky-shed syndrome – more scary words! Not all videotapes are prone to the problem and it can happen even when tapes have been kept in a good environment. Essentially the glue holding the magnetic oxide material to the plastic tape absorbs moisture from the atmosphere – the proper term is hydrolysis. It causes the tape to stick and bind when it’s being played. The strain caused by the binding (usually accompanied by a squeaking noise) can damage the tape further. It is possible to attempt to remove the moisture temporarily by baking tapes – this is a risky process best left to an expert. We don’t offer tape baking but can send tapes out to a specialist.
We’ve seen tapes damaged in other ways – with housings chewed by pets or physically broken cassette shells. For a variety of reasons VCRs and camcorders may develop a habit of devouring tapes. Most of these problems can be repaired without too much trouble.
Long term storage quality loss
This is the big question that many people ask. It is technically correct to say that the magnetic material holding the recording will eventually degrade and at some point the video will fail completely. However, that might be a few decades away from today.
In our experience most of the home video tapes we see are in fairly good condition and have survived quite well. We are able to convert the footage to a digital format just fine.
We have transferred large batches of tapes for commercial clients – many hundreds of tapes from their archives with a handful affected by degradation or hydrolysis even though they’ve been stored in similar conditions. Certain batches of a particular brand tend to be affected. We’ve seen fewer degradation issues with domestic tapes it sometimes happens and usually only one make of tape in a batch has been problematic.
Should you take action now?
If your old tapes are still in good condition and play well today then they will probably last another few years unless you’re unlucky or decide to put them somewhere silly like a garden shed.
Whether or not you’ll be able to find a decent quality, working player in a few years time is another matter. Analogue and digital video cassette recorders and camcorders are obsolete and have been out of production for a long time already.
A lot of later model VHS and SuperVHS decks had no workshop manual and no spare parts inventory. Camcorders are complicated beasts with tiny mechanisms containing a lot of delicate gearing, motors and micro-electronics. They aren’t necessarily impossible to repair but not far off and only if you know exactly what you’re doing and have the parts.
Finding spare parts to repair existing kit is difficult and sometimes impossible. Cannibalising other units for parts is one possible solution but that has limits too because common faults persist across models i.e. They all have the same fault. Hence the bits you need, even if you’re lucky enough to have a donor machine, might not work. Finding a repair person who is still in business that can actually diagnose and fix such things is becoming much more challenging.
We’ve built up a stockpile of machines in good working order. We look after our kit and keep an eye out for good, used equipment to replenish it where possible. Even with regular cleaning and basic maintenance checks they will breakdown and we won’t be able to get them repaired.
Taking all of that into account it’s not difficult to see how the lack of working kit with fewer repair options in future will lead to less people able to offer a video transfer service. Demand will outstrip supply and costs will increase accordingly. So, even if your tapes are in perfect condition a decade or two from now it’s far less likely that you’ll be able to have them digitised and it will cost a lot more than it does today.
Hopefully we haven’t frightened you too much. We’ve tried to keep to plain English and make sense of the subject. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below – we’d love to hear from you.
If you want to know about our transfer service then click here.
Very informative and an interesting read.I still have some JVC VHS tapes from 1981 that play very well.They have been kept in a cupboard at room temperature over the years.I can still remember the cost of them as well-£11.00 each.