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   Antiqueight (antiqueight@mastodon.ie)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Apr-2024 08:23:35 JST Antiqueight

   in reply to

   • vga256
   • Ramón Wilhelm

   @ramon_wilhelm @vga256 I still have mine. I keep meaning to get around to digitizing them..

   • Embed this notice
     Ramón Wilhelm (ramon_wilhelm@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Apr-2024 08:23:36 JST Ramón Wilhelm

     in reply to

     • vga256

     @vga256 you have a true underrated treasure collection!

     My family disposed their old recorded VHS tapes, even though some of them could still contain some TV treasures.

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     vga256 (vga256@dialup.cafe)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Apr-2024 08:23:37 JST vga256

     in reply to

     • Ramón Wilhelm

     @ramon_wilhelm 😆 i have a bunch from the 90s that we taped tv programs with, so there are some hilarious 1990s commercials on them.

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     Ramón Wilhelm (ramon_wilhelm@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Apr-2024 08:23:38 JST Ramón Wilhelm

     in reply to

     • vga256

     @vga256 great idea! :) Wish I could digitize new VHS tapes again. It's a great experience and I still have my VHS-Video-Grabber. I'm using a program called VirtualDub.

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     vga256 (vga256@dialup.cafe)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Apr-2024 08:23:39 JST vga256

     in reply to

     • Ramón Wilhelm

     @ramon_wilhelm that's a great point - i hadn't even considered that aspect. I have a bunch of VHS tapes that I should re-digitize! :)

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     Ramón Wilhelm (ramon_wilhelm@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Apr-2024 08:23:40 JST Ramón Wilhelm

     in reply to

     • vga256

     @vga256 this is just amazing! Didn't know that this Sony VCR coud improve a lot! This must be the perfect VCR to digitize VHS tapes!

   • Embed this notice
     vga256 (vga256@dialup.cafe)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Apr-2024 08:23:41 JST vga256

     so for the past month i've been leaving old vhs movies on in the background while i work

     i noticed that several tapes had faded audio that got worse over the course of the film, with a lot of humming in the background, to the point of being inaudible after a while. a few web searches suggested either a worn out vhs tape (which I feared), or a poorly tracked vcr (I adjusted the tracking, which didn't improve anything)

     i did notice that my older JVC vcr never had the "stereo" light on when playing back movies, and had a suspicion:

     so holy crap, til: most VHS tapes past a certain age have two audio tracks: an analog mono track, and a stereo hi-fi track

     when the vcr can't track the stereo hi-fi track properly, it switches to the analog mono track on the edge of the tape.

     my vcr was always downgrading to the analog track, which on several (ex-rental) tapes had degraded due to mishandling and abuse (being at the edge of the tape path)

     i picked up a Sony SLV-778HF today for $20 just to see if switching VCRs would make a difference.

     holy COW is this a huge improvement over my old 80s JVC vcr! not only did it pick up the stereo hi-fi track on all of the "bad" tapes perfectly, but it improved the video so much that it looks like a dvd.

     #vhs #tv #movies