 The idea was simple. We backed up our lives on VHS tapes and anytime we wanted, all we had to do was pop one into the VCR and be transported together into our precious memories. It was a simpler time. One that has led to today's complicated problem. Here are a couple of tapes I found in my attic, complete with never before seen footage from my student exchange to Montreal. Except, anyone still got a VHS player? No. No. Anyone? No sir, I did not. Not anymore. Bueller? VCR. What's VCR? Maybe if I just open it up and hold it up. Wait wait wait! Stop stop stop stop! That's a tape. Right. Oh, hi Mark, by the way. These are not film, so finding out what's on them is not as simple as just looking through them into a light source. Mark is our resident expert on digitizing VHS footage, and he's going to help me today. First, to find out if there's anything on these, and second, to recover them with the greatest possible quality. Oh, and third, he's also going to help me segue to... Our sponsor. Crucial. Crucial's SSDs ensure you're not wasting time on boot up or load screens. Their storage and memory options are built to be fast, stable, and affordable. Check them out at the link below. What am I even looking at here? This is York Lake in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, I think. Doesn't look great. No. No. So that would be just the poor recording quality at the time, or has this been degraded? It's a number of factors. So it's the tape itself was recorded in super long play. It's degraded. It's from the early 80s, and probably some other factors too. Right out of the gate, we've got some potential problems here. My tapes have been in storage for over 10 years in my attic, and two of the biggest enemies of VHS are heat in the summer, and moisture, which here on the wet coast is definitely going to seep into your attic. What are the odds that these are going to work at all? Well, this one's from 2003, so very likely. That's not that long. The time is a factor. How long are these things supposed to last? Usually 10 to 25 years, but I've had tapes. This tape is from the early 80s. It sure is. Yeah. Yep, that's my aunt. Okay, cool. Even if these are in great condition, that doesn't necessarily help me play them back. Now, you told me that VHS players have gotten rare and expensive, but eBay is full of players for like 30 bucks. So how do you account for that? Those can be hit or miss. Like a lot of them were just from storage containers. Sure. They say tested, but that doesn't guarantee anything. Sure. And this is analog, right? So just because it's working doesn't mean that it's going to look any good. And if all you wanted to do was watch it and be like, oh, Auntie Marks, Auntie or whatever, then that's fine. But it's a huge issue if you want to preserve your tapes in the long run by digitizing them, because garbage in, garbage out. You want the best possible read on the tape, especially if you want to have any hope of maybe, say, AI upscaling it when that technology continues to advance in the future. Yeah. And also VHS players or VCRs can just eat your tape the moment you put it in and then gone. Right. I mean, unless you have like a Star Wars like budget to remaster it. No, no, this was how I originally imagined my childhood with due backs and a weird alien musical number. I also imagined this enhanced larger version of our LTT water bottle for exactly the same price. LTTstore.com. So then if what I want is a quality VHS player, I mean, what am I looking for then? There's some general rules. First of all, you want a VCR with at least four heads. More is better, but four is. What is a head? Oh, a tape head. So it's what reads the tape. Oh, so it's essentially doing like four passes of it as it goes by, like four scans and taking like an average or what? Something like that. It's spinning. I see. So it's the way that they stored video on tapes from this era. And then what else do we want? You mentioned something about TBC. Yes. So ideally you want to get a VCR with a TBC. They're a little bit hard to find now. And you can also get an external one. Basically, it fixes most of the issues that you have with analog video. Squiggly lines, signal artifacts, color being skewed. Got it. Yeah. And then I'm assuming outputs matter because you're not going to get the best quality ingest if you're outputting via composite or something like that. So what do we want? Yeah, ideally S-Video. Composite does work. But if you have a unit with S-Video, you're golden. Okay. Now there are a handful of models like the AG1980P that the community knows are good bang for the buck or like the best one. But here's the thing about VHS. There were many hundreds, probably thousands of different players in the 80s and 90s. And that was a time when the Internet either didn't exist or wasn't as readily accessible. So a lot of the community knowledge about VHS tapes and about VHS players was very poorly documented compared to, let's say, today you were trying to learn about mod chipping a PS2. Or even if you were trying to do that 20 years from now, some of those articles, some of that knowledge will remain. Here? Yeah, it's a little tougher to find. So someone like me might say, well, no problem. Here's a professional grade VHS player for a thousand dollars. Surely that one will be awesome, right? You would think that. But if you have any tapes recorded in super long play, right? In EP mode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It will not play it back. I almost made that mistake when I was purchasing this unit. That could be a very costly mistake. And that would be such a classic dad move. Wait, so it can record two hours in this mode, but six hours in this mode. Surely I want the six hour mode, right? Pretty much all of my tapes are recorded like that. And regardless of whether you go consumer grade or professional grade for VHS player, it's an old device and there's a chance you're going to need to get it serviced or refurbished. And again, back in the 90s, I don't think you could throw a rock without hitting a VCR TV repair shop. But these days, there are few of these craftspeople left working and the cost can easily run you into the many hundreds of dollars. Thankfully, Mark here got a copy on what I'm told is a 1980P before prices evidently skyrocketed. I love that you told me this is bang for the buck and then I look it up on eBay, it's over a grand. Yeah. So how much did you pay for it? I paid 400 US dollars. 400 US dollars. Even that is pretty yikes. But aside from the rarity of the players themselves, there's other equipment that's required for a high quality capture that has also gotten harder to get your hands on. So why don't you walk us through what I'm looking at here? This is your analog to SDI digital converter from Blackmagic. Yeah, they don't sell this anymore, do they? I couldn't find it, but apparently they do. Oh, yeah, I found it online, but I could not find it in B&H. So I had to get the second hand and currently it's connected to composite out. But I do have the ability to go from S video out. It works better on some tapes than others. Got it. I found. So both options. OK, you can do the same thing with a OSSC, but this has more creature comforts for what I'm doing. Sure. Like what? Tell me something this will do that an OSSC wouldn't. You have a lot more standards. Oh, interesting. Wait, you can do beta? Yeah, you can do beta. Oh, shut up. Yeah. Yeah. OK, well, that's pretty cool. So there's a whole bunch of different standards you can turn off post-processing. OSSC will get you there, though, as well. So that's another alternative. And then this is more straightforward. This is just a simple SDI video capture device. Yeah. Thunderbolt. Cool. Yeah. OK. Well, that's relatively straightforward. This doesn't look cheap either, though. Is there a cheap and cheerful way to do this? Technology Connections did a video on transferring VHS tapes a while back. I love that channel. Yeah. Yeah. He's great. And his setup was a much more affordable. Sure. And I'm assuming just like an old like TV tuner card or something like that. Well, no, he went down that route, but he ended up going with an upscaler. So analog to HDMI upscaler with a capture card. And that's basically all this is without the upscale. Got it. Because for our purposes, we want as close to the original data as possible. Exactly. Is this as simple as just popping this into the player at this point? Like you had said that you've run into some issues where you've had to restore the tapes. Yeah. So these are all in fairly good condition. But we think we think. But just visually you can see there's no mold or anything in here. Yeah. Yeah. Mold, you say. Yes. And that is that's the moisture. OK. Yeah. And then I guess you could also have damaged housings, even though these have been in the hot, like as hot as 40 degrees Celsius during the summer. They haven't been in direct sunlight. Sunlight. Probably we're done. Right. Pretty much heat. You're it's not recommended, but it can hold up a little better. It's ABS plastic. So I was more worried about the tape itself. Yeah. This is the one that is more important. So I kind of want to start with this one. Should we just pop it in and see what happens for it? OK, it's rewound. I still remember left is rewound. Be kind. Please rewind. Right. I never rewound. You. This one. Wait, are you messing with me? Nope. This is what was on here. For real. For real. OK, because I had no idea what was on this, but it was in my like sentimental memories. No, it was. What is this? It went to Survivor. This is Survivor. Wait, so we got just the intro of Friends and then it. No, it goes into it. It's the 90s. They do. What am I looking at? Is this just all commercials? Yeah, it's just no, it's a recording of Friends. Oh, my God. And then after Friends. No, but after this, it's The Simpsons. I was never into Friends and I never even had cable TV. Yeah. So does that not raise any questions for you? Where would I have gotten this tape? Is it Yvonne's? No, no, it probably belongs to my high school girlfriend. She was into Friends. And for those of you wondering out there, this was how we watched TV on demand. Yeah, this is Netflix. This is Plex, actually. Yeah. 90s Plex. Is this still the commercial? Yeah. Oh, my God. There were so many commercials. You see, the one thing this VCR does not have is a commercial skipper. Right. You remember in the 90s, they had those and everybody wanted those. How did they know? I actually did not know that those were a thing. Yeah, it was a thing. I honestly don't know the algorithm. I know the sound mixing was like higher for commercials. Yeah. They could detect that. I'm just guessing right now, though. Oh, one other thing. This has no macro, which means I can playback and copy over commercial tapes. Oh, really? Yeah. So DRM in the 90s was called Macrovision. This has none of it. Cool. Can I just point out how much better this looks on the CRT than it does over here on the LCD? The color's a little off, but that's just a function of our capture setup. But the. It just looks better. Scanlines versus pixels. Yeah. And it would look even better if it was a direct feed from the VCR. Yeah. And if it wasn't just like a crappy copy that my ex-girlfriend made onto her crappy VHS with her crappy player. Should we call her up? See if she wants to copy back. I don't think Yvonne would like it. OK. If she's watching, though, I'll drop it somewhere safe. You can pick it up. OK. Well, that was. That was anticlimactic. Now we are on to the important one. Don't forget us. We think of you. To Barney. Barney was my camp name. The summer camp that I worked at, all of the counselors had aliases to make it more difficult to track us down after the fact if people were creepy. And mine was Barney, which I chose on a whim at the beginning of camp. Here's a cassette of all the moments of this summer on 10 by Barney or on to more something. Probably 10. I would think basically we love you by Barney, but like in a platonic way, a more would be like a romantic way. That's correct. Right. Sorry. I'm a little rusty. Haven't touched my French since this tape was recorded. And then, oh, in terms of capture, do we just start like do we just use OBS? Yeah, I just use OBS. I just tweaked a few settings. Okay. And I capture at 525i. 525i. Why? Yeah. You don't want to upscale as much as possible. Right. You want it as close to what's coming out because that way when it does come time to upscale, you don't have your different upscaling and processing technologies fighting with each other. So it's very big, bilinear. Got it. Okay. Play. I have no idea. Oh my God, it's me. August 6th, 2003. I think we're rehearsing one of the camp songs or camp performances or something. I have no recollection of this whatsoever, though. There's a lot. There's like over an hour's worth of footage. Really? Yeah. Feel free to fast forward if you want. Because there's no danger of doing any kind of damage to the tape at this point. You've already. I've already copied it and put it through all post-processing. That's necessary. Deinterlace. It should be fine. Okay. I believe the songs we're singing here are Star Academy. Are you familiar with Star Academy? It's kind of a it's kind of a cringy like American Idol thing, but Quebec, Canada only. Some good songs, actually, if you don't mind the. I'll say this of them. I remember so, so little of this. Can I point out one thing? Yes. See, when you fast forward. Yeah. See how you can still see what's going on. Yeah, that's your heads. That's what the heads do. They make it so that when you're paused or fast forwarding, you can see more of what's on screen. So like a single head VCR, which are like dime a dozen, you won't be able to see anything. I mean, this seems like it was pretty early in the program. I probably could barely speak anything at all. What is this? I don't know what that run is, but apparently it's good. Yeah. Oh, no. I want to come back in. Oh, I want her to turn off the camera. Why? Oh, my God. This is like I don't know that I have ever been more mortified than to see 17 year old me. Oh, wait, is this it? Yeah. Oh, my God. Okay. I'm so awkward. Are you glad we made this a video? It's me. Good. I will say if any of you are watching, you'll get some point. I'll be watching it for 20 years. Thank you. So this would have been at the end then because I was actually interacting with people. So I was there a month. There's kind of a hazing thing at the end. I vaguely remember this and mine was something to do with the theme that I had or the nickname that I had picked. Oh, wait, no, it's something else. What is happening? I think it's supposed to be purple. She's saying it's red. My nickname being Barney. I think the idea is I'm supposed to go purple with green spots. I wonder if any of these kids remember the weird like English anglophone at their summer camp. Oh, do I talk? I actually don't even understand what I'm saying. I know monitors are camp counselors. The kids apparently are into it. No, no. The thing the kids come up with a thing for them to do and she had to propose to one of the other counselors. I actually do remember that because it was rough. Okay, she had to bathe in spaghetti. Yep. Are we singing again? Please tell me we're not singing again. Pretty sure you're singing again. You're singing again. I'm clearly I have no idea what's going on. I'm reading the okay. No, no, we do not need to hear me singing again. I need to see it. Oh my god. Okay, enough. If you were ever a kids camp counselor, you would do the exact same stuff. Kids love it. And if you were like too cool to make a fool of yourself on stage, then you'd be a crappy camp counselor. That's what I'll say. Everyone at the job was not supposed to be allowed to speak English to me because most of them actually spoke perfectly good English. But that was the whole thing was they had to like agree that they would never speak English to me. And to the credit of the entire counseling team. They did not do it. They were like, Nope, he will learn French or die trying. Oh my god. No, no, this we have to watch this stuff. Just say come on. I will be curious to see how much of this I can actually understand when I go back to watch it because I'm not gonna lie pretty rough right now. Now that we've captured this, what can we do to improve the quality of it? Like obviously this doesn't look great. Well, first off, you always keep your master. So whatever you take off there in the purest form, keep it. Okay. Do I keep the tape too? Or can I safely get rid of that at this point? You can safely get rid of it as long as the masters back it up. But I would still keep it just in case something happens. Yeah, but then I've seen pictures of your crawl space. You would keep it. Should I keep it? You got an attic. It's free real estate. There's a few options for deinterlacing. Sure. I deinterlace with Topaz Labs gigapixel AI. I find it produces the best results. Okay. And I also upscale with that software too. We've done a video on that. Did you happen to process this in that way? Sure did. Oh, so we can look at it now. Yeah, we sure can. Oh, cool. Okay. Wait, so this is better? Yes. Oh my god. Stop. Stop. I don't want to hear it. It's deinterlaced. Oh, okay. It's been upscaled, but not a lot. Yeah, I guess if you try and do too much, you're going to... Honestly, my face is so greasy and shiny. It looks like running a game from 2003 at high res. You know how the textures are always like exactly like Far Cry 1. Oh man. What a little bit of foundation have killed me. Yeah, it's not bad. It's very watchable. Yep. I mean the quality, not the content necessarily. This was definitely a cool exercise. Thank you very much for helping. And I think it actually leads pretty well into a discussion of, you know, archival and backup strategies and how they're not as bulletproof as we might think they are. I mean, think about yourself. Like, you know, once something is in your hand, reassuringly physical, you think of it as backed up, right? But we often overlook that critical retrieval step. And it's non-trivial to solve that problem once not everyone has a VHS player, for example. And VHS might be my parents' generation's problem, but our generation has its own problems. Like, do you still have a DVD player? Nope. And 10 years from now, will you have a DVD player in your house? And then Zoomers, you guys are going to come up against your own challenges. You might think of a cloud backup as a backup. But even compared to this, I would make the argument that that's not a proper archival storage medium. You don't own it. You don't control it. And it could be wiped out at the whim of a megacorporation with basically no recourse for you. So same issue, essentially. You've got the backup. But when it comes time to look at it with your kids or your grandkids, will you actually be able to retrieve it in the way that I retrieved this message to our sponsor? Vessi. Do you hate wet socks as much as I do? Vessi footwear makes lightweight, breathable, and most importantly, water-resistant shoes. So no more squelchy socks. They're all squinchy. Their Dymotex material not only keeps your feet dry, but keeps them warm in the winter and cool in the summer. The stretchy design shows that comfort is at the forefront, at times making you forget you're wearing shoes at all. 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