Slashdot Mirror
Videotapes Are Becoming Unwatchable As Archivists Work To Save Them (npr.org)
Most videotapes were recorded in the 1980s and '90s, when video cameras first became widely available to Americans. Most of those VHS cassettes have become unwatchable, and others are quickly dying, too. Research suggests that tapes like this aren't going to live beyond 15 to 20 years. NPR has a story about a group of archivists and preservationists who are increasingly scrambling through racks of tape decks, oscilloscopes, vector scopes and wave-form monitors to ensure a quality transfer from analog to digital. From the article: Here's how magnetic tapes work: Sounds and images are magnetized onto strips of tape, using the same principle as when you rub a piece of metal with a magnet and it retains that magnetism. But when you take the magnet away, the piece of metal slowly loses its magnetism -- and in the same way, the tape slowly loses its magnetic properties. "Once that magnetic field that's been imprinted into that tape has kind of faded too much, you won't be able to recover it back off the tape after a long period of time," says Howard Lukk, director of standards at the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. Lukk estimates there are billions of tapes sitting around. There are plenty of services out there to digitize tapes -- local stores, online services, even public libraries and universities. Some services are free; some cost a lot of money. The thing is, many people don't realize their tapes are degrading. And some who do know -- even members of the XFR Collective (the aforementioned group), like Mary Kidd -- haven't even gotten around to their own tapes. Digitizing also takes a lot of troubleshooting. Each transfer the Collective does requires them to play the entire tape through while they sit there and watch it.
Just a scare to get you to spend money on something you don't need. I just watched some VHS tapes I recorded (EP Mode) in the summer of 1994, and they're fine, I've got audio cassettes recorded a decade earlier that sound the same as the day I recorded them (and in at least one case, better than the digital download of the same radio show via iTunes).
It's the same as going back to a cathode ray television after having watched something on a 1080p flat screen.
Many years ago, when I bought my first flatscreen TV, I gave my old (but very high end and not so old) Sony CR TV set to a friend. About four months later, I went over his house to watch a game and I was like, "Dude, what did you do to my old TV? The picture looks like crap."
That's how it's always looked.
I just sat there stunned. And, it really opened my eyes to the improvement between low-def and high-def. We're definitely spoiled today.
Let it die. We are terrified of letting the archive filter itself out, but really it is ok to let a billion VHS tapes go.
I think one of the real dangers of the digital age is that we are so worried about losing memories, we are afraid to make them.
Painstakingly archiving every detail of life really makes for a shitty life.
I know I sound like a curmudgeon, but there it is.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, I've noticed that my OLDEST (mid/late-80s) VHS tapes are in MUCH better shape than the tapes I made between 1995 and 2004. My theory: in the 80s, a VCR & its tapes were expensive, well-made precision hardware. By the late 90s, they were just cheap shit -- recorders AND tapes. I think my early-80s tapes weigh as much as 3 or 4 late-90s tapes.