When I’m importing video I often see seemingly empty spots on the tape. You can see them too and I’ve had customers ask me if I can remove them. These empty stretches of tape are a result of two completely different situations.
Drop-outs
Drop-outs are pieces of video tape the playback deck or VCR can not read properly. Usually the sound continues but the picture goes to battleship grey.
For example, you’ll be watching Billy’s 3rd birthday party and just as he goes to blow out the candles, the screen goes grey. You can hear him blow out the candles, lean too far and crash face-first into the cake, but the screen stays blank for those critical seconds.
In all likelihood, you’re not going to be able to send this clip off to the folks at America’s Funniest Home Videos. The tape is old, worn and the images are probably unrecoverable. Sometimes you see where video tape has not been stored properly and you get a drop-out repeating every few seconds – indicating that the tape has a flaw that penetrated several layers of the rewound video tape.
Sometimes, I can try different playback decks and get something out of that tape, but it usually doesn’t make any difference and those images are lost forever. I suspect the National Security Agency or the folks at Industrial Light and Magic could recover them, but, frankly, they’ve got a bigger budget for training and equipment.
When I’m working on a home move, I’ll usually leave these very short drop-outs in the footage. If they stretch on for 10, 20, 30 or more seconds, I’ll usually cut them out.
Blank Spots
These are different than drop-outs. With a drop-out, you’ve actually lost your images. With a blank spot, there was nothing there to begin with.
Many of the video cameras from the 1990’s would continue advancing the tape as you hit the stop button. Usually, you’ll see the video quickly take on a dark cast and then you’ll see what looks like white static for a split second. When you hit record again, the camera advanced the video tape a little before actually recording anything.
You end up with a gap in your recording between 2 and 8 seconds. As annoying as this can be if you’re watching a tape that had frequent starts and stops, at least you haven’t lost any footage.
I feel like I see this with 8mm video more than any other tape format, but that’s not based on any scientific research.
When I am editing a tape and I see a blank spot, I’ll cut it out. I don’t go looking for them but, when I see them, I usually remove them.
I can go through the tape frame-by-frame and remove any and all blank spots for an additional charge.
This Stuff Doesn’t Last Forever
So, two phenomenon that look pretty much the same but occur for completely different reasons.
Avoid the dreaded drop-out by storing your tapes in a clean, dry, temperature controlled environment – basements, garages and attics tend to be bad for video tape.
As for blank spots, I guess you have to decide if you can live with the break in the action between scenes that you’ve shot.
With all video tape, the sooner you get it into a digital format on a computer – with appropriate back-ups – the better. After all, this stuff doesn’t last forever.
For more information about transferring your home movies to DVD or importing them to your computer, visit www.safeandsoundvideo.com
