Why 80s kids need to rescue their old VHS tapes

If you’re old enough to remember when videotapes went in the TOP of a VCR, it’s time to launch a rescue mission.

The video memories you might have assumed would last forever are in danger of disappearing. Some of them might already be lost.

Growing up in the 1980s, you probably spent many nights enjoying movies rented from the local video store, or one of the VHS tapes in your family library. Those mass-produced tapes aren’t what I’m talking about, though — there are passionate collectors and preservationists out there, doing their obsessive work of archiving rarities and oddities from the video revolution.

No, I’m talking about the tapes you recorded.

Those tapes were precious in the 80s. A blank tape was, what $10? For that price, you’d usually get 120 minutes of recording time in Standard Play (SP) mode. You could record even more if you chose a lower-quality mode like LP or EP/SLP. So many memories were taped over, but eventually you filled one up and moved to another.

You might have a few of those tapes left.

What do you think was on them?

• Fragments of the TV shows you loved best?
• A segment of the news that featured you, your family, your friends or your home town?
• A music video that you loved so much, but can’t find anywhere on YouTube even today?
• Or best of all — footage captured with a video camera! Holy cow, look at how young we were!

Since I’m “The Media Hoarder,” I’m going to offer an extreme opinion here: These tapes are as important to your personal history as discovering your grade-eight diary, or a time capsule buried in the backyard of your childhood home.

That’s why you need to save them. Now.

Remember how videotapes store pictures: The VCR puts a magnetic signal onto the partly-metal coating of a long plastic ribbon that’s wound onto a pair of spools. That tape is vulnerable to damage - stretching, breaking, wearing out, or being crushed, smashed, soaked or melted - and the weak magnetic charge of those microscopic particles eventually fades.

In other words, the pictures are disappearing.

The tapes have lasted longer than anyone expected them to. Experts have figured out how long VHS tapes should last when stored properly, and we’re past that now. They’ve turned out to be more hardy in practice than in theory.

With the right equipment, I’ve found that a lot of tapes, even from the early 1980s, can still be played and captured one more time.

If you play your tapes on your own VCR, they might show nothing. You might see snow. You might see black. You might hear muffled sounds. You might not see anything at all.

On my gear, those weak signals will go through a professional-level VCR, then into a Time Base Corrector that synchronizes it all, and then into a digital capture device that turns it into digital signals that DON’T fade, that DON’T break down, that DON’T fall apart when copied over and over again. That capture can be your final capture. Honestly, some just won’t play, but I’ve got a STACK of VCRs from pro to consumer to give the best chance of success.

Now, where ARE your tapes? Did you take them with you when you moved out, or were they left with other childhood stuff? Have they been stored well, or are they around heat and moisture?

Here’s my recommendation: Go get them. Rescue them. Save them. Bring them somewhere safe, then get in touch with me at Cygnals Multimedia to have your VHS, VHS-C or Mini-DV videocassettes digitized and handed back to you on a USB drive that you’ll back up, copy, and share with the people you love.

You kids will dig it. Your grandkids. Your parents, if they’re still around.

And you. You were the first generation to grow up with the magic of home video. Celebrate, share, and preserve those memories. I’m here to help.

Start Here: VHS to Digital in London, Ontario