Future of video tapes

If you still have playback equipment for some tapes formats in your collection, consider making viewing copies on DVCAM, DV or DVD even if you cannot yet embark on a project for preservation-quality digitisation. Making viewing copies like this is not difficult or expensive, and will save time in working with the collection and selecting material for restoration and digitisation. The digital viewing copy can be played as often as you like, for instance to collect the data for a tape checklist.
Playing the original tape can thereby be avoided, which will contribute to its survival.

It is recommended that you keep tapes even if they have been converted to high-quality digital masters. You may still need them later, even if that may now seem unlikely. When tapes have been digitised so that they no longer have to be consulted, they can be stored at relatively low temperature, which is not always feasible when users need to have access. Stable conditions are the first requirement for storage, and moving tapes from cool storage to room temperature for consultation is not recommended because of the fluctuations in temperature and humidity.

If there are digital copies to consult, the original tapes can be stored under more strict conditions and may have a longer life. The best method to store magnetic data is in a vacuum environment. Oxygen and moisture are a very bad combination for the life of metal particles used for magnetic media.
See guidelines for storage in links and literature

The possibilities of the digital world are already overwhelming and things are bound to progress even further. We can expect that devices which read a magnetic signal from a tape and convert it into digital information will become more sophisticated and more efficient, and that digital files will be processed more easily. Digitisation of tapes that are at serious risk because of deterioration and obsolescence of equipment obviously cannot be postponed. If there is no immediate risk to the material you can afford to wait a little and you may well find that in a few years digitisation can be done a lot more cheaply and quickly than today. Video tape suffers from playback, chemical deterioration and, after many years, deterioration of the magnetic information. Therefore it is advisable to copy tapes every 8 or 10 years.

The Little Archives have a lot of experience reproducing original VHS tapes due to home recordings of television programmes from late 1970. With the use of our today’s technology it is possible to produce images that impress viewers by their quality - of course provided the VHS tapes are in good shape.

It has been told…..

When the first 2 inch colour video recorders were introduced by Ampex, several film companies had the idea of transferring 35mm negative film to 2 inch Quadruple tape. Earlier they had already converted from older 35mm colour negatives, three separate black and white positives on 2 inch. video tape by Ampex. It was thought that in later years it would be possible to make a bright new 35mm film negative from the Ampex tapes. Apparently thousands of films were transferred to Ampex in this way, and the original 35mm films discarded.

In the early 1970s it was discovered that magnetic tape was not the best possible archival format after all. When the tapes had been stored for about ten years, the video signal turned out to be seriously impaired. Various factors had affected the magnetic information to such an extent that the image had become blurred. This was a tremendous shock, as the original film already had been discarded.