VHS Tracking Question...
 

I found 2 old tapes in my dads basement that have 1981 airings of Star Trek on them from a local station (on SLP), I want to transfer these to DVD since they have the commercials and whatnot intact but the freaking tape WILL NOT TRACK. There is a tracking line that keeps running up from the bottem of the screen and I can't manual track through it, otherwise the quality is really good on these. Is there a way to fix this or is the tape ****ed? I thought, maybe if I took the tape reels out and put them into a new case that might help, will that work?

Try a different vcr. I have a few tapes. They play like crap in one. (Especially if it's an emerson vcr. )

Plays great on the other 2 JVC & hiatchi

What could it hurt? LS , ducan, etc may be able do something with it. They have the hardware to clean that up. Switching cases wont do much good. Its on the tape...

what the hey. Whatever twirls your beanie :)

sometimes adjusting the heads (well rollers) can fix this as well, though I would use a somewhat "junker" vcr for that

This is gonna sound strange- but

a couple tricks that sometimes work

the vcr yo uare trying it in, fast forward it all the way
rewind it all the way- sometuimes this helps configure it to that machines belts.
2- and this is going to sound relaly odd

have you tried the older vcr's ( you can find them at pan whops etc)
they are playback ONLY no record feature
with a manual SLIDE for a tracking bar-
For some odd reason, this worked really well for me, with some ancient tapes that got wet in a basement.


The fast forward/rewind thing helps a fe wof my moisture irritated tapes as well.