Splicing Out Damaged Portions Of AVHS Cassette Tape

I worked in a video store for four and a half years, and saw the transition from 100% VHS on the shelf, to our first DVD (to the confusion of all customers), to a 90% DVD store library. While DVDs? were easy enough to fix (with expensive equipment) every other staff member hated repairing VHS tapes because it was a hands-on manual job.

VHS tapes had a bad habit of snapping, due to the two reel mechanism common with most tape systems. If you owned a private tape you most likely had never had any issues at all, but with publicly rented tapes the problem arose where the tape would ripple on an edge, tear (or weaken from repeated viewings), then snap completely, leaving two reels of tape with nothing in-between. Later model VCRs? had “jet” rewind and fast forward features which aided in further weakening the tape, and even pausing a tape midway caused wear. VHS cassettes simply weren't designed for this kind of durability.

There are two kinds of damage to VHS tape ribbon;

1) Ribboning, where a portion of the tape has a rippled edge (like that of a ribbon) or other damage, but is unbroken. This typically happens whereby a certain part inside a damaged VCR rubs against the tape as it's spun around the heads inside it.

2) Clean break, when the ribbon is damaged to the point where it snaps, leaving two broken ends. Newer machines stop the playback immediately, leaving the two ends almost touching. Old machines keep spinning the reels, dragging the tape inside the cassette.

To somebody who dusts off an old wedding VHS or needs to convert some other old video on a cassette into a digital file, they might think all hope is lost when they find either types of damage.

There was a VHS splicing machine ($14.95 if I remember) with special silver metallic stickers, but there's no reason why you can't do this without one. If you manage to find such a splicing machine consider yourself very lucky, as they wouldn't have been marketed commercially for the public.

Caution: before you start, if you're working with a home video, make sure you break off the tiny square plastic flap on the left hand side of the spine, easily found next to where the labels are stuck. This isn't the big flap at the top of the tape, just the little square one on the opposite end. If there's only a hole where a square should be, ignore this caution. And if you're wondering, it's the analogue version of copy protection; if the square isn't there the VCR won't allow you to record over the tape. Recording over VHS tapes was the bane of many a home video maker due to it's simplicity.

Ribboning is the simpler of the two to fix:

a) Grab the VHS tape in question, facing the top of it away from you, so you can see the underside with the two reels, and the “flap” on top.

b) On the left hand side of the flap there's a small square button, which is a spring lock for the flap. Pressing it will let you lift the flap. You'll need to jam something between the flap and the cassette-top to stop the spring from snapping it shut. Once the flap is open you can depress the locking button.

c) The reels themselves are spring locked as well, and the button for that is hidden away on the underside of the tape, toward the bottom centered between the reels. It's recessed inside a hole to prevent from accidental unlocking. You'll need to keep this unlocked while you're fixing the tape, and a ball-point pen (without the nib or ink) does the job well, or anything else of the correct size that you can jam into the hole. Beware using anything soft or mouldable, as you won't get it back out of the hole.

d) Once you've done that you can pull the tape freely from both reels. If you're looking for a damaged area, use your thumb (or a coin) to twist one reel until you located the damaged area.

e) Spin the reels towards the centre of the tape to loosen the reels (to eliminate any chance of snapping the tape), then gently pull the loose tape out of the cassette, ensuring that you're pulling it straight out, to eliminate any further ribboning of the tape as it leaves the cassette.

e) Continue removing the tape until both ends are sound. We generally found 1 metre of tape is around 2 seconds of video, so if you're pulling a lot of tape out of the cassette, it might not be salvageable.

f) Grab a pair of sharp scissors, and cut the tape at each end where it becomes sound, ensuring the cut is completely vertical.

g) Measure sticky tape (or metallic tape) to the correct height of the tape (and subtract four millimetres), and around a centimetre wide. Don't think for a second that the wider the better - it's harder to correctly place a wide piece of tape than a narrower piece.

h) Using anything that will hold the two ends of tape together whilst leaving you enough space to apply the tape, make the two ends meet. Make sure it doesn't overlap (having a tiny gap is okay, whereas overlapping can be a complete waste of time) and double check that the tape is straight. If not, cut one end so that they meet flush in the centre.

i) Apply the sticker you've made onto something pointy ended (a pointy pen is good) without sticking the whole thing to it. Line up the sticker so it runs straight across the join, and place it on one end of the tape. Before you try to stick the other end down, put your finger over the end of the sticker that you've just applied, and simply roll the pen (or whatever you're using to apply the sticker) away from the sticker. Unless you've stuck it hard on the pen, the sticker should drop right off and straight onto the other end of the tape. Put your thumb on it to make sure it's adhered properly. And don't fear if you mess it up, just cut that portion out and start again.

j) After that, wind one reel until the tape has disappeared back into the cassette. Remove whatever you had locking the reels, and also what you were using to hold the flap open. Voila!

If you were unlucky enough to find two ends of tape under the flap (or worse, no tape underneath the flap at all), then you've got a clean snap to repair. Surprisingly, these often have less damage to the tape as a whole, and typically occur randomly surrounded by perfectly sound tape. Much of the process is the same:

If you have the broken ends of the tape underneath the flap, all you need to is cut the damaged ends off and follow the steps above.

If you have no tape underneath the flap at all, then you're about to go into the darkest, deepest and nastiest place of them all - inside the cassette.

a) Grab a screwdriver (99% of tapes are Phillips head screws, but film studios used Triwing occasionally for some reason) and flip the cassette over. There are five screws on the underside, and every one of them holds the top half to the bottom. Undo all of them, then holding both parts together, flip the cassette so the top is facing you.

b) Once you've made sure there's no stickers joining the top half to the bottom (look around the edges of the tape, some studios have holographic ones to prevent people repairing tapes), gently lift the flap and hold it open with something suitable. Carefully lift the top half of the tape from the bottom, ensuring that you lift it directly up, and not one end first. Stow it away somewhere where it won't be disturbed, as the locking spring is still inside the top half.

c) You'll be presented with the two reels and the simple mechanism that locks the reels. Above the reels there are numerous silver cylinders on either side. Each end of tape runs straight past all but the top one on it's side, where it ducks around the outer side of the cylinder and out into the flap area. Your tape ends will be wound onto the reel or floating around the cassette somewhere.

d) If you can help it, don't remove the reels, because the locking spring for the reels (which runs on a cog system around the edges of each reel) is extremely fiddly to fix once you've broken it - so much so that I used to keep unfixable tapes to transplant a working lock into a good cassette. If you can't avoid removing a reel, hold your finger over the spring locking system and carefully remove one reel at a time. Remember: a VHS without a spring lock for the reels will either not work at all (in a good VCR), or damage itself after a short period (in most VCRs?).

e) Chances are there's enough loose tape inside the cassette to work with, but if you need some extra tape, hold one finger down on the spring locks (which takes the finger out of the reel cogs) so you can freely spin them for some extra tape. Ensure the locking fingers are back on the reel when you've got enough spare tape free.

f) Using what I just said about the silver cylinders in step d, feed the tape past the cylinders and out of the top.

g) Grab the top half of the cassette, and carefully replace it, again making sure that you evenly apply it to the bottom half.

h) Ensuring that you have enough tape hanging out the top, gently close the flap (don't worry about damaging the small amount of tape hanging out, as you'll cut that off soon) and while holding both halves, flip the cassette back over. Replace all five screws.

i) Using the steps to fix ribboning (from step c onward) join both ends of the tape.

Using these two methods, you'll make a damaged portion of the magnetic tape stronger than the tape around it, and you should never have a problem with that section of tape again.

The only other thing left to do is digitise the video held on the magnetic tape and dispose of it.

And yes, I wrote all this from scratch, then only afterwards noticed that nobody else has yet gone to anywhere near as much detail as this. Oh well.