Hello Nowhere Video Productions. I am turning 50 this February 2023. I was in the Army for 10 years and deployed to Iraq in 2003 and 2004. In December 2004 I received a Red Cross message that my wife suddenly passed away in her sleep. I resigned my commission and left the Army to raise our 3 children. I was going through some of my old tapes and happened upon a collection of family videos, one of which had a snapped tape. I searched on youtube for a solution and came upon your video. I was able to repair the tape with the instructions you gave and then copied the tape over to a digital format and it is now saved forever as a digital file. What was on that tape were lost memories of time with my wife and my first-born child. I guess sometimes you don't know how impactful such a small instructional video can be. Your video was a huge blessing to me and my family. Thank you for teaching us how to do this. ~ Ty Howard
Ty - Thank you for your service and thank you for sharing your personal story. Your loss is devastating. I wish you and your children hope and healing. The memories on your tapes are like treasured windows to the past. Being able to save and preserve those becomes a precious time capsule. I'm very happy that my video helped you to rescue those memories. Take care and Thank You!
Excellent video Todd. I went to transfer a vhs tape for a friend and it snapped as soon as I started it. Thanks to your video you saved the day, as well as my friendship.
Thank you and God Bless I went step by step was able to tape back together my VHS tape that had split right in half. Thank you for talking so clearly and slow where I was able to understand.
15:02 It's a good practice to firmly rub over the splice with a smooth object (like the shiny backing-paper from peel-and-stick labels) to get it as tightly-adhered to the tape as possible. It's vital that the splice doesn't come apart again.
Thank you for the step-by-step guide. The repairs that I will make will be slightly easier as they are right where the leader connects with the reel. I have a 1988 Sansui (Funai) VCR that has this habit of rewinding way too fast to the point where it snaps off the beginning of tapes. I believe I need to replace a belt that regulates that part of the mechanism (loading belt). For the time being, would be nice to reinstate the cassettes that it broke.
I would not recommend making a splice in the middle of a tape like this, I have seen the devastating effects this can have on the fragile video heads. If a tape is broken in two, then find a junk cassette. Take one spool of your broken tape and attach this to the leader of the junker's empty reel (using the existing splicing tape , which can usually be peeled back and reused). Then , after emptying the junker's second spool, use that in the damaged cassette and do the same. You then effectively have your broken original in two parts, tape one and two. That way there's no risk to the VCR. In a world where you can lose the whole contents of a hard drive to failure , viruses or corruption of data, it makes no sense to abuse the original tape with sticky tape, which oozes adhesive onto adjacent tape layers and can wreck the video heads. What happens if at some future date you need to re-do the transfer?
Ive successfully wrecked my vcr after taped my vhs, its provides me black screen after running on it. Any advice or its head bricked forever? I shouldve listened to you…
Okay, so if anyone would have the same issue… I managed to fix it : I opened the vcr and clear the heads, and some places where the tape running through with rubbing alcohol. First it wasnt clear enough but i saw picture, then i let the tape running for a while and it became more and more clear. Now its good as it was.
The splicing-tape should always be put on the reverse side of the tape for another very-important reason --- it will allow the VCR's heads to read even the spliced area of the tape, whereas if the splicing-tape is adhered to the front side of the tape, the heads will be unable to read the magnetic surface through the splicing-tape. This is also important if you are using a spliced tape for recording, as well, since (especially if you've made really clean splices) it will allow for a mostly-unbroken media-feed (particularly if you're using the SP speed for recording, so that the splices will advance past the heads more quickly) as the tape runs through the splices in both record and playback mode.
5:20 It's actually much wiser to always lift off the top cover from the cassette, with the cassette sitting right-side up. Not all of the tape-guides in a cassette may be the fixed split-metal "press-fit" type seen here --- some tapes have just loose plastic cylindrical rollers that rotate on spindles, and thus these rollers will simply fall out if the bottom half of the cassette is lifted off. Also, some cassettes have looser parts (including the split-metal tape-guides) than others, and so they may not stay in place if the bottom cover is lifted off, no matter what the cassette's configuration.
4:00 Some VHS tapes have a security-head fastener for this center screw, with a three-leg hole instead of a regular four-leg Philips-head hole; to remove these screws, you'll need to use either a tri-wing screwdriver (Google "tri-wing screwdriver"), or a chipped flat-bladed screwdriver (a fairly-thick blade is better suited here, in that it will fit into the screw-head more snugly, and won't deform under force so easily as a thinner blade might) with a blade that's just wide enough to snugly fit down into one of the screw's three legs and rest against the center of the hole. If you don't have a screwdriver with a blade that's already chipped on one side, you can grind/file down one side of the blade of a fairly-small screwdriver to make it narrower, fitting it against the security-screw's hole periodically and gradually shaving off a bit more width from the blade till it fits down into one of the screw's slots, and you can then gingerly twist the blade counter-clockwise to coax the screw loose and remove it. Then once you get the screw out, discard it and replace it with a regular Philips-head screw from another cassette. :D
My dad tasked me with rewinding his favorite tape (it’s a video of him and his brothers reenacting an episode of Cops in the 80s), but when it was finished, the tape came out snapped in half, and has a few light crinkles on one end. I snipped off the broken ends and made them straight just like you said, and aligned them as best I could, I just hope the tape plays and the part I snipped isn’t the Cops part, and rather some other part like my sister as a baby playing with toys. This is the worst why did this happen.
-Me thinking this would be easy. -Watches video 😬😯😢 Edit: watches video then realized all I had to do was spin the real and tighten it, it wasn't broken.... thank you for the video! 😅
Never use scotch tape…it can ruin the heads. Overlap the two ends of tape face down and use a straight edge razor blade to cut through both ends…they will line up perfectly . Your tape used end runs of of a spool that was spliced together.
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You helped me save my childhood videos. I don’t know how to exactly express how thankful I am for this. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!
Thank you. Extremely helpful, clearly spoken and no stupid unecessary music!!
Hello Nowhere Video Productions. I am turning 50 this February 2023. I was in the Army for 10 years and deployed to Iraq in 2003 and 2004. In December 2004 I received a Red Cross message that my wife suddenly passed away in her sleep. I resigned my commission and left the Army to raise our 3 children. I was going through some of my old tapes and happened upon a collection of family videos, one of which had a snapped tape. I searched on youtube for a solution and came upon your video. I was able to repair the tape with the instructions you gave and then copied the tape over to a digital format and it is now saved forever as a digital file. What was on that tape were lost memories of time with my wife and my first-born child. I guess sometimes you don't know how impactful such a small instructional video can be. Your video was a huge blessing to me and my family. Thank you for teaching us how to do this. ~ Ty Howard
Ty - Thank you for your service and thank you for sharing your personal story. Your loss is devastating. I wish you and your children hope and healing. The memories on your tapes are like treasured windows to the past. Being able to save and preserve those becomes a precious time capsule. I'm very happy that my video helped you to rescue those memories. Take care and Thank You!
Thank you for showing how the tape fits around the rollers and pins! I watched 4 videos where they did not show that clearly.
Before taking the spools out, we need to take a picture so that we can know how the spools go back in.
Excellent video Todd. I went to transfer a vhs tape for a friend and it snapped as soon as I started it. Thanks to your video you saved the day, as well as my friendship.
I've been loving your VHS related videos, Todd. Keep keeping the past alive and well!
Thanks for taking the time to produce this video, Todd. It was incredibly helpful.
I recently bought a hauppauge to start digitzing my VHS tapes. This video has been very useful! Now my only limit is my lack of storage.
Thank you so much! An old tape my parents had broke when they reversed it SO FAST that the tape broke. The VCR was broken and I have to repair it
Thank you and God Bless I went step by step was able to tape back together my VHS tape that had split right in half. Thank you for talking so clearly and slow where I was able to understand.
15:02 It's a good practice to firmly rub over the splice with a smooth object (like the shiny backing-paper from peel-and-stick labels) to get it as tightly-adhered to the tape as possible. It's vital that the splice doesn't come apart again.
Thank you for the step-by-step guide. The repairs that I will make will be slightly easier as they are right where the leader connects with the reel. I have a 1988 Sansui (Funai) VCR that has this habit of rewinding way too fast to the point where it snaps off the beginning of tapes. I believe I need to replace a belt that regulates that part of the mechanism (loading belt). For the time being, would be nice to reinstate the cassettes that it broke.
Thanks for your lesson. It was very thorough. It helped me a lot.
Glad it was helpful!
I would not recommend making a splice in the middle of a tape like this, I have seen the devastating effects this can have on the fragile video heads. If a tape is broken in two, then find a junk cassette. Take one spool of your broken tape and attach this to the leader of the junker's empty reel (using the existing splicing tape , which can usually be peeled back and reused). Then , after emptying the junker's second spool, use that in the damaged cassette and do the same. You then effectively have your broken original in two parts, tape one and two. That way there's no risk to the VCR. In a world where you can lose the whole contents of a hard drive to failure , viruses or corruption of data, it makes no sense to abuse the original tape with sticky tape, which oozes adhesive onto adjacent tape layers and can wreck the video heads. What happens if at some future date you need to re-do the transfer?
Ive successfully wrecked my vcr after taped my vhs, its provides me black screen after running on it. Any advice or its head bricked forever? I shouldve listened to you…
Okay, so if anyone would have the same issue… I managed to fix it : I opened the vcr and clear the heads, and some places where the tape running through with rubbing alcohol. First it wasnt clear enough but i saw picture, then i let the tape running for a while and it became more and more clear. Now its good as it was.
The splicing-tape should always be put on the reverse side of the tape for another very-important reason --- it will allow the VCR's heads to read even the spliced area of the tape, whereas if the splicing-tape is adhered to the front side of the tape, the heads will be unable to read the magnetic surface through the splicing-tape. This is also important if you are using a spliced tape for recording, as well, since (especially if you've made really clean splices) it will allow for a mostly-unbroken media-feed (particularly if you're using the SP speed for recording, so that the splices will advance past the heads more quickly) as the tape runs through the splices in both record and playback mode.
I have been doing this type of repairing to my tapes for a very long time
5:20 It's actually much wiser to always lift off the top cover from the cassette, with the cassette sitting right-side up. Not all of the tape-guides in a cassette may be the fixed split-metal "press-fit" type seen here --- some tapes have just loose plastic cylindrical rollers that rotate on spindles, and thus these rollers will simply fall out if the bottom half of the cassette is lifted off. Also, some cassettes have looser parts (including the split-metal tape-guides) than others, and so they may not stay in place if the bottom cover is lifted off, no matter what the cassette's configuration.
Thank you so much! This is a great tutorial, much appreciated!
4:00 Some VHS tapes have a security-head fastener for this center screw, with a three-leg hole instead of a regular four-leg Philips-head hole; to remove these screws, you'll need to use either a tri-wing screwdriver (Google "tri-wing screwdriver"), or a chipped flat-bladed screwdriver (a fairly-thick blade is better suited here, in that it will fit into the screw-head more snugly, and won't deform under force so easily as a thinner blade might) with a blade that's just wide enough to snugly fit down into one of the screw's three legs and rest against the center of the hole. If you don't have a screwdriver with a blade that's already chipped on one side, you can grind/file down one side of the blade of a fairly-small screwdriver to make it narrower, fitting it against the security-screw's hole periodically and gradually shaving off a bit more width from the blade till it fits down into one of the screw's slots, and you can then gingerly twist the blade counter-clockwise to coax the screw loose and remove it. Then once you get the screw out, discard it and replace it with a regular Philips-head screw from another cassette. :D
Thanks for this tutorial! It was very helpful!
Glad it was helpful! Thanks!
thanks sir for your clip
very well explained.
Excellent repair tutorial, thanks!
Awesome shirt, great tutorial, thank you.
My dad tasked me with rewinding his favorite tape (it’s a video of him and his brothers reenacting an episode of Cops in the 80s), but when it was finished, the tape came out snapped in half, and has a few light crinkles on one end. I snipped off the broken ends and made them straight just like you said, and aligned them as best I could, I just hope the tape plays and the part I snipped isn’t the Cops part, and rather some other part like my sister as a baby playing with toys. This is the worst why did this happen.
I love the Contra shirt! This was a great tutorial however, it plays for a second and then makes a strange mechanical sound and stops. Any ideas?
Exactly what position is door spring suppose to be in ??
before put back together.
Just what the doctor ordered :)
Is there a way to transfer the tape that was cut off?
This method is also good for Beta tapes? or any other tape format?
sweet this helped alot. thanks
What kind of screw driver for round screws?
Good idea , thanks for your share!
Thank You!
Your shirt is so dope
Thanks
-Me thinking this would be easy.
-Watches video 😬😯😢
Edit: watches video then realized all I had to do was spin the real and tighten it, it wasn't broken.... thank you for the video! 😅
I always thought kodak was a good brand.
Interestingly im hear to repair that same exact kodak t▪︎120 brand
thank you sir
Thank you, perfect!
So helpful! Thank you!
Glad it was helpful!
My WWF tape I just bought snapped I'm so sad.
Tape is not rotating. In jvc.. Vcp..?
what is your capture method to turn it into digital?
I actually did a video on the subject
th-cam.com/video/2jt4SpyvhsU/w-d-xo.html
I prefer the nail polish, very quickly
I use good old super glue to fix snapped vhs tapes
Never use scotch tape…it can ruin the heads. Overlap the two ends of tape face down and use a straight edge razor blade to cut through both ends…they will line up perfectly . Your tape used end runs of of a spool that was spliced together.