That happens. There is always variance in alignment between two decks, which is why VCRs have tracking control in the first place. Sometimes it does take a physical re-alignment though, particularly with stuff recoded in EP, or if there is Hi-Fi audio. On the few times I’ve done transfers of audio cassette tapes for people, I ALWAYS realign the head to best line up with the tracks on the tape.

Ive been backing up vhs-c and regular vhs recording before the tapes give out. I love doing that kind of stuff so i vounteered for my family to do it. The tapes have been sitting under the basement stairs on shelves for the past 20 years. Storing conditions were not great to say the least. The vhs-c of my birth that was kept in a box in a room upstair with regulated temp came out the best with clear audio and not much color fade or jitter while the ones downstairs ...well ... They are watchable but 3 of them are on the way out or fully gone. Pictures that come in and out, the beginning is fine then when you get to the middle it is gone, you can see the the machine loosing signal with the image violently bouncing around then vanish completely. Some parts lost all their colors, tracking artefacts around the top and bottom with audio degradation (if present at all)... Some were in hard plastic sleeves, other in cardboard sleeves. Its the dust, age and humidity it degraded them so bad especially the ones that were still in cardboard sleeves. Ive had two that were victim of sticky-shed too... Im saving what i can while i still can 😅

3:39, That is funny as hell

I have been using the video game store down the road for disc resurfacing. They have big polishing machines and most charge $5 to resurface and it works!

Hi - what's your advice for fixing videos where there is feedback/jumpiness at the top of the video...like the video has diagonal flickers occasionally. I've cleaned the heads (I clean them at least once per 2 tapes, and gotten good conversions from other tapes. I've also tried other VCR's and get the same flickers on the other VCRs too. I have a screenshot. I've done some research online but can't really find any other examples of this.

is this the head skew problem? I have a similar tape that no tracking can recover on any machine. Possibly recorded on a VHS camcorder or transferred on a unit with head skew?

Hello, I have several hi8 cassettes from 15 to 20 years ago. I put these cassettes in the camera to review but there was no picture or sound and only a broken screen like a checkerboard was showing And this was the problem in all castes. I am very worried that the videos are lost, please help me.