Old school VHS cleaning problem

[powerplay]

I just came across a few vhs tapes (very very important to me) i am thinking about putting on dvd. I havnt used these tapes in a while and i noticed that on one tape the plastic cover was broken and the tape itself was a bit dusty. I tried putting it through a video tape cleaner and it did clean it up a bit but it felt like the cleaner put a lot of strain on the tape so i dont think i'll be putting it through there again. Does anyone have any idea how i could clean the tape properly by myself without damaging it before i put them on dvd???

[toomanycats]

You could a Q tip and alcohol to clean the exposed tape on the fron of the cassett. If you stick a pencil in the hole (gently) on the bottom, it will release the ratcheting mechnism and allow the tape wheels to move freely. I can't see how anything but the front would be dusty as the rest of the tape is spooled. If you want to be brave, open up a VCR place the tape inside, put it in play, and clean the tape with a Q tip wile it is playing, don't have too much light or the unit tape end sensor may stop the tape. I had a TV repair shop and had an old VCR I used to clean customers tapes as a last resort. Don't use tape head cleaners, they suck and will ruin you tape heads on the drum, clean that manuallly in the direction of rotation.

[powerplay]

thanks this helps a lot

Thanks you have no idea how much this helps I asked a guy once and he said it was hopeless. And the tape is pretty dusty in fact most of the dust isn’t on the front tape but on the spooled tape.
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There are just a few things I need to make sure about: you said to use a Q tip and alcohol on the tape in the video but could using alcohol damage the tape?
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You also said that you used to do all this by using an old VCR and pressing play it just so happens that I have an old VCR but did you mean to say play or fast forward because if I clean the tape on play it would take me 2 hours to clean it??

[toomanycats]

You could get tape cleaner but most of it is alcohol based. Tape really is a temporary media. Place the machine in play mode and then press fast foward (sometimes this is called search) the idea being that the tape is completely exposed. If the carriage is exposed enough you could just press fast foward, the problem is that if you go to fast you will just smear the dust with the alcohol. That why I used to charge people for this. It is primative analoge data recovery. If you really want to clean it slow and staedy is really the only way. I would recomend fast search with the tape exposed and be prepared to change swabs often. Cheap Q-tips will leave cotton strands, so you might want to use the chamois swabs they sell at
Radio Shack for this.

[atifsh]

hope this will help u its somwhat like toomanycats thing.

once iv cleaned a video tape that was got wet in rain water and dusty, i played and it xxxx vcr's head, so i put it in vcr open the top cover, and using a tissue paper hold the tape when its out frm cassete, and put the vcr in rewind mode and then frw and so on, i had to change 4 5 tissues, aftewr that and cleaning vcr head, i manage to capture the video, though still bad but better then nothin

[powerplay]

thanks

thanks a lot guys

[atifsh]

ur welcome ,

does it worked for U?