The following is my observations and conclusions from my own experiences.
A few years back, I started to digitize all my tapes that I created in over 15 seasons of videotaping sporting events. The early years (1990 thru ‘93) were 8mm and the later years on Hi-8, with the final year digital tape.
The early 8mm tapes seemed to be in terrible condition, but I learned that going back before the video went to pot and replaying the tape, the information was usually there. It took many tries to get some of these tapes digitized, but the picture was quite good when I got it.
As some of the tapes from ‘92 thru ‘96 were stored in a different place and not as accessible, I skipped to some latter years, which proved to be easier and continued on. But, along the line, I got an order for a mid-nineties tape so I dug out the tape and decided to recreate the master with my newer and better equipment. This proved to be a chore because I was having the same problem digitizing, but I was determined to do it. After completing the job and the tapes I had been working on, I decided I had better get busy and digitize the rest of the mid-nineties. Some of the tapes seemed to go better than others, but it was a real challenge and I was losing more and more hair. Then, one day I sat down to start another tape, and I noticed it was a different brand than I normally used. It played straight through. The next tape gave me fits and low and behold it was my usual brand. The next three were the off brand (not my usual brand) and they played through again. From that day forward, I started paying attention to the tape brands and how they worked. I found a definite difference in tape brands and formulas in the same brand, the high grades were worse than standard grades.
A couple of weeks ago, I had one of my pieces of equipment in for service and when I went to pick it up, I started to tell the tech (we have become good friends over the years) about my observations. I no sooner started when he took over the conversation and proceeded to, almost word for word, tell me what I was going to tell him, with a few additions about tape manufacturing in the old days and tests he and others had done on them.
The point is, these little observations should be a warning to all that we need to back up all our valuable work on more than one type of media and in my case, I will save the originals until I have gone through each and every one (and I have a few thousand) to make sure I have everything I want.