Why do I just love 8mm video things...totally hooked. Spending hours on it and making gadgets to help with manual winding and recovering of damaged tapes. Saved a few hours of precious footage that would have been lost forever. Thanks for all your videos...it made me getting adicted and now I can't get off of spending hours on end. Just amazing how these machines operate. Be safe and keep the videos coming. Flip...from South Africa...PAL country...lol.
Hey brother, thanks for the tutorial. I had twenty 8mm cassettes, 2 broke while trying to convert to DVD. Managed to save both of them with one requiring about 10 splices. Both contained important family memories. You rock!
Congrats - Wayyy more patience than me. After the 3rd splice, I gave up. One tape that will have to go on the "gee wonder what was on that tape" pile. They are my own so only myself to blame. Great vid!
Hey! Maybe that's the whale they exploded! LOL I know you're aware of the tape play direction and I was under the impression that the tape should be slightly overlapped in the direction of the tape play to avoid any problems. Also, in addition to your method of pulling the tape to move the spool of tape, maybe a very thin piece of flat plastic slid between the tape pack and the plastic reel to also help separate the tape from the spool. And YES - Multiple data backups are ESSENTIAL!! I'm doing captures right now and I have the files on at least 3 different drives so far. Love all your content, it's great to see a lot of smart advice. Long live TAPE! (Just kidding, I agree with you.)
The amount of times I've had to do this with audio and video tapes with normal clear tape top man again Dave for information to someone who has never done this before
As you said, keep the tapes in a dry place (Not the shed or roof space). For the few videos ive transfered to digital, they are on usb and dvd. I know everyone says dvd's are dead, i still use them for backups, i also use hard drives. Hard drives are not as unreliable as people think.
Hard drives are one of the most reliable storage devices for their price, but today's HDDs probably won't be good for decades, because of the insane data density. USB stick? No way, never ever store any data on them long term, nor on SSDs and SD cards! Flash memory is not reliable for long term storage, I have 18 year old 256-512MB USB sticks that still holds the data, but as the capacity went up, the data retention time went down proportionally. Some current flash memory devices have a declared guaranteed data retention time of less than 5 years! DVD-Rs can be flaky, but if you store them right and back them up every 5, or maximum every 10 years, they are OK for backup. Theoretically BD too, but I don't have any experience with them (yet), I only have stamped BDs. The most reliable archiving format is tape. Not necessarily these 8mm video tapes, or DV, but proper archiving cartiridges. If you store them right, you can rest assured your data is in safety for 20-30 years, especially if you have double backup on two different branded tape stocks. The biggest data archives are still on tape, for a good reason. I wonder how the development of magnetic storage chips is going. They are existing, but only in small capacity (few MB max). These FeRAM chips have a declared data retention time of 150+ years! Although I would take it with a pinch of salt, bacuse they claimed the same for UV EPROMs, and while they often retain the data for 40+ years, I have seen quite a few of them with amnesia after just 20-25 years.
@@mrnmrn1 I found uv eproms to be quite reliable as long as the window is covered with a bit of black tape. This will make you laugh, i modded a zx spectrum a long time ago so i could program eproms. And i saved the image to tape as well as to another eprom. I know it's all old fashoned, but it worked great :-D I found the willem programmer was good untill newer machines lost there parallel port, shame as it was useful. Sorry im in waffle mode :-(
BDR and mdisk is the longest storage medium. Both Blu-ray recordable and the DVD comparable mdisk store data the same way. By burning holes in the metal recording layer. 100+ years for both. Inline dye based CDR and dvdr they are not affected by UV light exposure as the data is stored in a metal film.
@@12voltvids Yes, but my concern is that the data layer is very close to the surface of BD. I don't know if the covering layer (from the laser side) is plasitc, or some kind of epoxy. As we know, most plastics are permeable to gases. In the long term, the metallic recording layer might be subjected to oxidation. Although the covering layer might be evaporated quartz, that would make it more reliable, as a solid quartz layer (even in a few microns thickness) is not permeable to oxigen. I know the surface of BDs is quite tough, so it might be quartz. AFAIK, the scratch proof layer on eyeglasses and car headlights is a microscopic layer of vacuum deposited quartz.
@@zx8401ztv Yes, they are reliable, as I said, I saw some with intact data well after 40 years. But that's not always the case. The EPROM in my 1987 JVC BR-7000 VCR became corrupted in around 2012. I have seen a few more instances, almost all of them were covered, and most of them was fine at the semiconductor level, because I was able to re-program them after erasure. I kept the corrupted EPROM (IIRC it is an NEC one) of the BR-7000, because it was weird, sometimes the VCR was able to read it, sometimes not. The same happened with the programmer, as I tried to read it. The checksum was changing between reads. Finally, I was able to read a working code from it. I used an ancient Sunshine programmer (with internal ISA card in a Slot-1 Pentium II).
Hi. Thanks for the video. Its very useful. I have one question for clarification. When you do the splice is it on the inside of the tape or outside of the tape? It looks like from the video you splice the inside of the tape, but that seems to be the dull side of the 8mm tape and other sites seem to indicate that is the side that contacts the heads. Can you please clarify ? Thanks
Ron - Not my vid but I can tell you the outside. I use to work on VHS decks years ago but priciple is the same. You don't want anything going against your tape heads as that can spell disaster in so many ways. See time 4:40 and run from there.
@@12voltvids But here in India, people won't do it even if you pay them. That too to transfer VHS to digital media. I had to buy the equipment and do it myself.
@@abhishekmallik1194 lol that's because whatever you charge is too much. You could offer to do it for free and they would expect a discount on free lol.
@@12voltvidsNowadays everyone just wants to make quick and easy money. That's the main problem. But, It's because of people like you that old equipments still have hope. I was able to repair lots of my stuff by watching your videos. Especially my Panasonic VCR. Just keep up the good work Sir 👍👍
I have a Sony Digital 8 Camcorder and spilled beer by accident on the tape. Just Curious if these tapes were water resistant. Waited several weeks to months to let it dry because putting water or alcohol could damage the tape further. When I went to put the tape in the camcorder it give me a c31:42, error and When I tried to eject the tape it give me a C31:22 error I believe and the tape stuck out. I gave the camcorder a smack the motor started to work again and then shutoff and gave me a c31:40 error I think. When I went to eject the tape I found out the tape snapped into half. The broken tape is towards the beginning of the film. Can't tell if the tape is moldy. Trying to figure out how to repair the tape because it broke towards the beginning of the film. Also how would you get mold off the tape without damaging the tape further and how could I salvage my old family video on the tape.
Something is wrong with my two tapes I recorded a music video all night on them and then when I got home I was watching them and I put it down on my bed and watched yt for a lil and then called my friend up to show him the tape and then next thing you know it isn’t playing the tape and after a few seconds it says “this tape has ended” and it just not letting me see my videos or nothing do anybody knows what’s wrong?
It's not necessary the lid will open without that latch in place. that's just to keep it locked. Since you're opening a damaged tape to repair it chances are you're just going to digitize the tape anyway so it's not necessary just put the tape together, digitize abd dispose of it.
I wonder if you could soak a piece of paper with iso and slide it over the edges to loosen at least that part? It might soak into the edges a bit too. I guess you could even dunk the whole spool into iso?
No you can't. You do not want to wet the tape with anything. All that would do is drive the mold further into the tape and make it even harder to recover. The first time I saw moldy tapes about 10 years ago it took me the longest time to figure out how to actually get the tape to break free from the mold. The problem with 8 mm tape is this so thin. It's strong it doesn't stretch easy that's the benefit because you can get away with pulling the tape to the point where you can tighten it down on the hub which will break the bond of the mold and if all the tape then too unravel but again because it is such a fine tape you're not going to want to put any type of liquid on it that would ruin the tape. It's not a point of cleaning the tape either. You're not preserving a tape that's got mold on it you're breaking the Bond of the mold to get one play out of the tape. The mold is going to continue to grow so soon as you've got the mold Bond broken you're going to play the tape and digitize it and then toss the tape away because it has mold on it. There's no way to stop it from growing so don't even bother trying recover the tape and throw it away. I know I just upset some people that are just in love with magnetic tape but there's really no love loss between myself and magnetic tape.the reason these tapes went moldy in the first place is because of the way that people stored them. I have a room full of tape some of it is close to 40 years old and none of my tapes have gone moldy. But then I invested in air conditioning. Air conditioning does more than cool the air, it removes moisture. Moisture is why mold grows on tape keep them in a cool dry place and you won't have a mold problem. Unfortunately many people stored them in damp basements or worse put them in the safe thinking they were keeping them safe. I tell you a story about a friend who his mother didn't like Banks and used to keep cash at home, and because she was afraid that someone would break into their house and steal the cash she used to seal the cash in canning jars and then bury them in the garden. I still remember to this day she went to dig some up to buy something only to find that all the bills had gone moldy we're all stuck together and we're pretty much worthless. Try explaining that to the bank when you walk in with $10,000 stack of bills that are all moldy wanting to exchange some for new ones. Especially $10,000 of undeclared money. These people were Jewelers and had a high-end jewelry store Their son it's a very good friend of mine and is still in the jewelry business and is making a killing. He's an importer and designer and makes a lot of stuff that's sold at retail shops across the country.
@@12voltvids That's for the in-depth reply! I ask because I often see people running their VHS tapes past cotton balls with alcohol to clean them. Is that a bad idea? I can't imagine mold on the surface is good for the heads or digitising. I figured soaking with iso, only for the purpose of respooling to break the mold. Then digitising as soon as it dries and then bin it.
Data renention time of today's high capacity flash chips is ridiculously low, below 5 years. Therefore SD cards, USB sticks, and SSDs are the worst choice for archiving purposes, The most reliable are archival tape cartridges, but they (and the drives for them) are too expensive for consumer use. The second best option is HDD, but I would not trust bigger than 2TB ones (maybe 4). And always make double or quadruple backups on everything important. By quadruple I mean: two different media, at two different locations (in case if a natural disaster or a fire destroys one of the locations).
USB sticks store data in what is, in simple terms a stack of microscope capacitors. A voltage is set to represent the data. Yes multiple levels of voltage per capacitor not just a 1 or 0. Over time that voltage leaks out and then you have nothing to read back. The higher the capacity the more voltage "steps* are used. The old low capacity just used 2 levels. High and low. East to determine if it was 1 volt or 0 volts. If voltage leaked to .6 you could still recover the data. Now imagine that you have 8 bits encoded into that same memory cell. Now you are using that 1 volt to store 8 possible voltage states to describe a full byte as opposed to 1 bit. You originally put in 1 volt but now only .8 is being read. .8 is a totally different word than 1 volt. Does this simplify it a bit?
@@mrnmrn1 what you talkin' 'bout, Willis? I bought an SSD back in December 2014. That's over nine years ago. It's been my main system drive since January 2015. Your advice of a hard drive and optical disc back up is solid though. Two different locations, especially!
@@RealHomeRecording That's right, I also use SSDs in all my PCs as system drives. SSD is great stuff. But *not* for archiving! Look up some modern flash memory pdf datasheets. Guaranteed data retention times are usually below 10 years without power. That is not true for an SSD that is in active use, because it is refreshing itself! But you can't put an SSD on a shelf and expect intact data on it 10-15 years later. You might get lucky, but it's like Russian roulette.
Why do I just love 8mm video things...totally hooked. Spending hours on it and making gadgets to help with manual winding and recovering of damaged tapes. Saved a few hours of precious footage that would have been lost forever. Thanks for all your videos...it made me getting adicted and now I can't get off of spending hours on end. Just amazing how these machines operate.
Be safe and keep the videos coming. Flip...from South Africa...PAL country...lol.
Hey brother, thanks for the tutorial. I had twenty 8mm cassettes, 2 broke while trying to convert to DVD. Managed to save both of them with one requiring about 10 splices. Both contained important family memories. You rock!
Congrats - Wayyy more patience than me. After the 3rd splice, I gave up. One tape that will have to go on the "gee wonder what was on that tape" pile. They are my own so only myself to blame. Great vid!
Hey! Maybe that's the whale they exploded! LOL I know you're aware of the tape play direction and I was under the impression that the tape should be slightly overlapped in the direction of the tape play to avoid any problems. Also, in addition to your method of pulling the tape to move the spool of tape, maybe a very thin piece of flat plastic slid between the tape pack and the plastic reel to also help separate the tape from the spool. And YES - Multiple data backups are ESSENTIAL!! I'm doing captures right now and I have the files on at least 3 different drives so far. Love all your content, it's great to see a lot of smart advice. Long live TAPE! (Just kidding, I agree with you.)
The amount of times I've had to do this with audio and video tapes with normal clear tape top man again Dave for information to someone who has never done this before
Our two cat's Bell the tabby and Casey the Calico love watching your videos. We enjoy them too.
As you said, keep the tapes in a dry place (Not the shed or roof space).
For the few videos ive transfered to digital, they are on usb and dvd.
I know everyone says dvd's are dead, i still use them for backups, i also use hard drives.
Hard drives are not as unreliable as people think.
Hard drives are one of the most reliable storage devices for their price, but today's HDDs probably won't be good for decades, because of the insane data density. USB stick? No way, never ever store any data on them long term, nor on SSDs and SD cards! Flash memory is not reliable for long term storage, I have 18 year old 256-512MB USB sticks that still holds the data, but as the capacity went up, the data retention time went down proportionally. Some current flash memory devices have a declared guaranteed data retention time of less than 5 years!
DVD-Rs can be flaky, but if you store them right and back them up every 5, or maximum every 10 years, they are OK for backup. Theoretically BD too, but I don't have any experience with them (yet), I only have stamped BDs.
The most reliable archiving format is tape. Not necessarily these 8mm video tapes, or DV, but proper archiving cartiridges. If you store them right, you can rest assured your data is in safety for 20-30 years, especially if you have double backup on two different branded tape stocks. The biggest data archives are still on tape, for a good reason.
I wonder how the development of magnetic storage chips is going. They are existing, but only in small capacity (few MB max). These FeRAM chips have a declared data retention time of 150+ years! Although I would take it with a pinch of salt, bacuse they claimed the same for UV EPROMs, and while they often retain the data for 40+ years, I have seen quite a few of them with amnesia after just 20-25 years.
@@mrnmrn1 I found uv eproms to be quite reliable as long as the window is covered with a bit of black tape.
This will make you laugh, i modded a zx spectrum a long time ago so i could program eproms.
And i saved the image to tape as well as to another eprom.
I know it's all old fashoned, but it worked great :-D
I found the willem programmer was good untill newer machines lost there parallel port, shame as it was useful.
Sorry im in waffle mode :-(
BDR and mdisk is the longest storage medium. Both Blu-ray recordable and the DVD comparable mdisk store data the same way. By burning holes in the metal recording layer. 100+ years for both. Inline dye based CDR and dvdr they are not affected by UV light exposure as the data is stored in a metal film.
@@12voltvids Yes, but my concern is that the data layer is very close to the surface of BD. I don't know if the covering layer (from the laser side) is plasitc, or some kind of epoxy. As we know, most plastics are permeable to gases. In the long term, the metallic recording layer might be subjected to oxidation. Although the covering layer might be evaporated quartz, that would make it more reliable, as a solid quartz layer (even in a few microns thickness) is not permeable to oxigen. I know the surface of BDs is quite tough, so it might be quartz. AFAIK, the scratch proof layer on eyeglasses and car headlights is a microscopic layer of vacuum deposited quartz.
@@zx8401ztv
Yes, they are reliable, as I said, I saw some with intact data well after 40 years. But that's not always the case. The EPROM in my 1987 JVC BR-7000 VCR became corrupted in around 2012. I have seen a few more instances, almost all of them were covered, and most of them was fine at the semiconductor level, because I was able to re-program them after erasure.
I kept the corrupted EPROM (IIRC it is an NEC one) of the BR-7000, because it was weird, sometimes the VCR was able to read it, sometimes not. The same happened with the programmer, as I tried to read it. The checksum was changing between reads. Finally, I was able to read a working code from it. I used an ancient Sunshine programmer (with internal ISA card in a Slot-1 Pentium II).
Fuji? No that's a _Fungi_
Nice one.
Love your video, it is very helpful!
Would it better to wear cotton gloves while doing this to avoid getting finger oils on the tape?
Not going to hurt it. Remember once tapes are this bad you are only looking to get 1 play to digitize it and then it's off to the bin it goes.
Makes me wonder what the mold is feeding off.
Hi. Thanks for the video. Its very useful. I have one question for clarification. When you do the splice is it on the inside of the tape or outside of the tape? It looks like from the video you splice the inside of the tape, but that seems to be the dull side of the 8mm tape and other sites seem to indicate that is the side that contacts the heads. Can you please clarify ? Thanks
Ron - Not my vid but I can tell you the outside. I use to work on VHS decks years ago but priciple is the same. You don't want anything going against your tape heads as that can spell disaster in so many ways. See time 4:40 and run from there.
This job requires a lot of patience 👍👍
It does and people pay me to do it. It's a job.
@@12voltvids But here in India, people won't do it even if you pay them. That too to transfer VHS to digital media. I had to buy the equipment and do it myself.
@@abhishekmallik1194 lol that's because whatever you charge is too much. You could offer to do it for free and they would expect a discount on free lol.
@@12voltvidsNowadays everyone just wants to make quick and easy money. That's the main problem. But, It's because of people like you that old equipments still have hope. I was able to repair lots of my stuff by watching your videos. Especially my Panasonic VCR. Just keep up the good work Sir 👍👍
@@abhishekmallik1194
I want to make quick and easy money.
I have a Sony Digital 8 Camcorder and spilled beer by accident on the tape. Just Curious if these tapes were water resistant. Waited several weeks to months to let it dry because putting water or alcohol could damage the tape further. When I went to put the tape in the camcorder it give me a c31:42, error and When I tried to eject the tape it give me a C31:22 error I believe and the tape stuck out. I gave the camcorder a smack the motor started to work again and then shutoff and gave me a c31:40 error I think. When I went to eject the tape I found out the tape snapped into half. The broken tape is towards the beginning of the film. Can't tell if the tape is moldy. Trying to figure out how to repair the tape because it broke towards the beginning of the film. Also how would you get mold off the tape without damaging the tape further and how could I salvage my old family video on the tape.
Something is wrong with my two tapes I recorded a music video all night on them and then when I got home I was watching them and I put it down on my bed and watched yt for a lil and then called my friend up to show him the tape and then next thing you know it isn’t playing the tape and after a few seconds it says “this tape has ended” and it just not letting me see my videos or nothing do anybody knows what’s wrong?
How do you re-install the tiny head cover latch back as you re-assemble the cassette? I can’t manage to do it!
It's not necessary the lid will open without that latch in place. that's just to keep it locked. Since you're opening a damaged tape to repair it chances are you're just going to digitize the tape anyway so it's not necessary just put the tape together, digitize abd dispose of it.
I wonder if you could soak a piece of paper with iso and slide it over the edges to loosen at least that part? It might soak into the edges a bit too.
I guess you could even dunk the whole spool into iso?
No you can't. You do not want to wet the tape with anything. All that would do is drive the mold further into the tape and make it even harder to recover. The first time I saw moldy tapes about 10 years ago it took me the longest time to figure out how to actually get the tape to break free from the mold. The problem with 8 mm tape is this so thin. It's strong it doesn't stretch easy that's the benefit because you can get away with pulling the tape to the point where you can tighten it down on the hub which will break the bond of the mold and if all the tape then too unravel but again because it is such a fine tape you're not going to want to put any type of liquid on it that would ruin the tape. It's not a point of cleaning the tape either. You're not preserving a tape that's got mold on it you're breaking the Bond of the mold to get one play out of the tape. The mold is going to continue to grow so soon as you've got the mold Bond broken you're going to play the tape and digitize it and then toss the tape away because it has mold on it. There's no way to stop it from growing so don't even bother trying recover the tape and throw it away. I know I just upset some people that are just in love with magnetic tape but there's really no love loss between myself and magnetic tape.the reason these tapes went moldy in the first place is because of the way that people stored them. I have a room full of tape some of it is close to 40 years old and none of my tapes have gone moldy. But then I invested in air conditioning. Air conditioning does more than cool the air, it removes moisture. Moisture is why mold grows on tape keep them in a cool dry place and you won't have a mold problem. Unfortunately many people stored them in damp basements or worse put them in the safe thinking they were keeping them safe. I tell you a story about a friend who his mother didn't like Banks and used to keep cash at home, and because she was afraid that someone would break into their house and steal the cash she used to seal the cash in canning jars and then bury them in the garden. I still remember to this day she went to dig some up to buy something only to find that all the bills had gone moldy we're all stuck together and we're pretty much worthless. Try explaining that to the bank when you walk in with $10,000 stack of bills that are all moldy wanting to exchange some for new ones. Especially $10,000 of undeclared money. These people were Jewelers and had a high-end jewelry store Their son it's a very good friend of mine and is still in the jewelry business and is making a killing. He's an importer and designer and makes a lot of stuff that's sold at retail shops across the country.
@@12voltvids That's for the in-depth reply! I ask because I often see people running their VHS tapes past cotton balls with alcohol to clean them. Is that a bad idea? I can't imagine mold on the surface is good for the heads or digitising.
I figured soaking with iso, only for the purpose of respooling to break the mold. Then digitising as soon as it dries and then bin it.
@@Octamed it actually won't hurt the heads at all. The heads are tougher then you would think.
how about running a file recovery app on the USB stick to see if that pulls it back? Was it just formatted by mistake?
Data renention time of today's high capacity flash chips is ridiculously low, below 5 years. Therefore SD cards, USB sticks, and SSDs are the worst choice for archiving purposes, The most reliable are archival tape cartridges, but they (and the drives for them) are too expensive for consumer use. The second best option is HDD, but I would not trust bigger than 2TB ones (maybe 4). And always make double or quadruple backups on everything important. By quadruple I mean: two different media, at two different locations (in case if a natural disaster or a fire destroys one of the locations).
USB sticks store data in what is, in simple terms a stack of microscope capacitors. A voltage is set to represent the data. Yes multiple levels of voltage per capacitor not just a 1 or 0. Over time that voltage leaks out and then you have nothing to read back. The higher the capacity the more voltage "steps* are used. The old low capacity just used 2 levels. High and low. East to determine if it was 1 volt or 0 volts. If voltage leaked to .6 you could still recover the data.
Now imagine that you have 8 bits encoded into that same memory cell. Now you are using that 1 volt to store 8 possible voltage states to describe a full byte as opposed to 1 bit. You originally put in 1 volt but now only .8 is being read. .8 is a totally different word than 1 volt.
Does this simplify it a bit?
@@mrnmrn1 what you talkin' 'bout, Willis? I bought an SSD back in December 2014. That's over nine years ago. It's been my main system drive since January 2015.
Your advice of a hard drive and optical disc back up is solid though. Two different locations, especially!
@@RealHomeRecording That's right, I also use SSDs in all my PCs as system drives. SSD is great stuff. But *not* for archiving! Look up some modern flash memory pdf datasheets. Guaranteed data retention times are usually below 10 years without power. That is not true for an SSD that is in active use, because it is refreshing itself! But you can't put an SSD on a shelf and expect intact data on it 10-15 years later. You might get lucky, but it's like Russian roulette.
@@mrnmrn1 without power? Okay now that makes more sense!
Then the USB you used was not a good USB. in 17 years of putting transfers on a USB I have never had this happen.
It was a name brand Kingston. Data was fine when recorded and client complained a few years later that data was gone.
How much would you charge me to do it for me?? 🙂 I know I'll screw it up.
It depends on how long it takes.