Crinkled tape
 

I had a friend ask a question that I had no answer for, maybe someone can help. His
XL2 ate his tape in a very nasty way. Not just a minor crinkle, the edges were stretched, severely crinkled and folded over. He wants to try cut-out the damaged area and resplice the tape back together. Is that possible?, Does anyone make a splicing kit?

Jim

I don't know if anybody makes a kit, but what I used to do back in the 3/4" tape days, when such things were very common, was to open up the cassette, pull out a couple of feet of the tape around the offending area. Cut out the bad part. Overlap the two ends just a bit and, using a razor blade, cut both, which will give you two matching ends. Butt them up together and tape them down to the surface so they don't move and then tape them together, as you would if you were splicing film with a tape splicer. Then slice the scotch tape off so it doesn't stick out wider than the videotape. Make sure you do this on the shiny side of your videotape.

I've also spliced Betacam tape as well. I've never done DV tape, but looking at a cassette, on one end you'll see a tiny little plastic lever. Push it back and you can open the cassette. Then in order to release the reel so you can unwind a little tape, it looks like you'll use a pencil or something like that to push back that little lever that's on the bottom, near the back inside a little rectangular hole. All cassettes have some sort of release mechanism like that. If you have 3 hands, it's easier, but you can do it with 2, although it's a bit awkward.

Use that "invisible" scotch tape, not the shiny sticky kind. Just tape over your butt splice and tape it down to your tabletop, then cut it to size with a razor blade. You'll go nuts if you try to cut and apply a tiny piece of tape the correct width. Probably not a good idea to do the razor cutting on a nice table, use a board or something.


Again, be sure you tape to the back side of the videotape, ie., the shiny side. Then--rewind the tape and get a second camera or deck and firewire cable and immediately dub the spliced tape to a new tape. A good tape splice will run through your camera or deck OK, but it's not a good idea to push your luck--play it once to dub it to a new tape and be safe.

You might look at B&H and see if there's a tape splicer you can get for DV size tapes. There may be, but it won't do much more for you other than maybe making it easier to make a clean cut and hold the tape down while you splice it.

Bill, to correct you if I may... the shiny side is the top side (NOT where you want to place the splice tape) and what passes over heads. The underside is where to correctly place the splice tape but it's dull matte looking.

Bill Busby,

The "shiny" side is EXACTLY where you want to place the splicing tape. The "dull" or matte side is the oxide material where the recording takes place. You do NOT want to put any splicing tape on this side as it not only will not record or playback from the splice area, it will very likely get unwanted adhesive on the heads and may totally ruin them.

My advice to James' friend is to definitely not run a spliced tape through any camcorder he cares about, maybe some "junker" off ebay to get what remains of his recording off the tape.

He needs to have his XL2 checked out to find out why it "ate" the tape or it may very well happen again. Although I never had this happen to any of my tapes, the possibility was one of several reasons I went with tapeless flash media gear.

Bruce, then what you're saying is that miniDV tape isn't threaded the same way, for example... such as 3/4, betaSP, VHS, etc? What am I missing here?

The first time I saw how 3/4 loads & threads was way back in the day with a 3/4 machine where I worked that we would always have to take the top cover off (for whatever finicky reason I can't recall that machine had). When a tape was inserted, the tape is pulled forward by retractable guides and rests around the helical head drum. VHS and beta would thread the same way and I don't see how miniDV would be any different. Actually I don't see how there's any way a cassette based tape could be threaded with the opposite/underside (non-shiny side) of the tape coming in contact with heads.

I didn't mean to guide this thread to another level but I do think it's necessary for the sake of 'where' splicing tape should go.

I searched and found a few diagrams to more demonstrate what I was trying to say.

If you look at the first diagram above you can easily see that as the tape comes off the supply reel and goes around the head drum, the inside surface is what comes into contact with that head drum. It is that inside surface that is the "dull" or "matte" side of the tape, the other side that does not come into contact with the drum surface is shiny.

That is the backing. The reason the "dull" side is "dull" is because that is the oxide layer.

Actually Bill is right. The base side is the flat side. I must have been in a film flashback there or something. Also, I've seen splices made on both sided and they run through most decks OK, at least once, so it's probably not a big deal if you do the splice nice and smooth and make sure the scotch tape is even and not lumpy. If you look at the bottom drawing it's a little more clear.

Pacific Video Repair - What We Will Fix

Video tape repairs and restoration to DVD - Audio tape repair and remstered to CD
the us and uk have places that repair tapes.