I have a bunch of old camcorder videotapes that are 20 something years old that I want to have transferred onto DVD. They’ve been sitting untouched in plastic cases, in a dry wooden cabinet. I would hate for them to crumble or break in the process, does this happen very often?
I’ve never transferred tapes that old, but if they’re going to crumble, are they much use anyway?
If you are woried about them crumbling you sjhould have transfered them a long time ago.
I have been transfering some of mine and am using this system.
Even I have figured out how to use this software:)
If the magnetic tapes are in good enough condition to play properly, the risk is minimal. We’re not talking about celluloid film here.
One caveat – the tapes are likely to be “sticky”, and may potentially jam in a VHS machine. Cleaning the VHS prior to playback will help; but if the tape does jam, it was probably too far gone to salvage anyway.
A few years ago I got rid of all my VHS tapes, transferring several hundred of them to DVD. Many of them were at least 20 years old.
You should have no problems. Do you have a head cleaning tape?
I’ve run some pretty old tapes, and I’ve never had a problem with them breaking. And, as mentioned, if they do break, they would have broken the next time you played them anyways, so you really didn’t lose anything.
The biggest problem I’ve had is with tracking.
Another helpful technique is to run them through a rewinder first, especially one that has an adjustable speed (so you can keep it slow if needed). This will help deal with any ‘sticking’ problems, and get the tension adjusted properly, before trying them in the actual player.
Thanks for the answers. I’m bringing them to a shop and have a guy do it (he’s giving me a good deal, I’d try it myself except I don’t have all of the equipment). My thinking in asking this was, it’s one thing for the owner of these tapes to play them and have them break, but if they break at the shop, I’ll forever be known as She Who Took The Precious Camcorder Tapes Out Of The House And Caused Them To Be Destroyed. The guy I’m handing them over to should know what he’s doing.
Just last week I transferred a tape from 25 November 1990 (sinking of the I-90 Bridge newcasts) to DVD and had no problems at all. The tape was probably 4 or 5 years old when I recorded it…
ordinary consumer video rewinders are hard on tapes, i wouldn’t use on old tapes or anything i cared about.
Back when I was preparing to transfer my 16+ year old VHS tapes to DVD (by myself without using a service), my uber-geek boss cautioned me to use test tapes that I didn’t care about to work the kinks out of the process before processing my “real” ones.
His claim was that VHS tapes that have been wound tightly in one position for umpty-dump years get brittle, and the process of playing them (which involves unwinding and rewinding them again) flakes off some of that old material. So you want to make sure that you only have to play them once to get the cleanest transfer to DVD.
Given that these VHS tape were tapes that we’d made of out kids when they were little (and were therefor precious to me), I took his advice. Good thing, too, because it took me quite a few passes with tapes I didn’t care about (I dimly remember “Care Bears” and “My Little Pony” tapes sacrificing themselves to the cause) to get the process down cold.
Of course, if you’re using a service they’ve undoubtedly got the process down cold a long time ago.
And, of course, the longer you wait the more brittle things get, so quit worrying anf get them transferred right now.
I agree, I copied one a couple of years ago that I taped in 1990. I did clean the heads first, and ran the tape forwards and back on FF and RW beforehand.
he is perfectly right. With very old tapes, record while you watch them for the very first time. The quality will be much worst after that. Do not rewind, just record!
I forgot to come back and report - I took the camcorder tapes (about 6) to the shop and they transferred them to DVDs with no problems. These tapes were over 20 years old, had been viewed only a couple of times, and basically had just sat on the shelf.
So I suppose it’s worth a try, to transfer them!
And now they’re on DVD they should be good to sit on the shelf unwatched for another 25 years or more! 
Why don’t you just upload them to the cloud where they can sit unseen until the apocalypse. 
I get what the OP is saying but when I read the tittle “Is it safe” I couldn’t help thinking the OP was facing some sort of Mission Impossible situation wherein the VHS tapes would go up in a puff of smoke should he try to transfer them. 
Don’t trust the cloud as your only backup. I suggest transferring them to a hard drive or two though.
i would think that it would be more dental.
If the VHS you have is the VHS from Ring/Ringu then there would be definite health and safety concerns.