Re: Rare VHS Database?
 

That 35mm film print was made of highly inflammable cellulose nitrate film, so the fire code would prevent a theater from playing it without an inspecor present. Further, there would be a problem concerning the placement of the sprocket holes and the playback speed of the film, which almost certainly would not be 24 frames per second. Arguing over the switchover from VHS to digital is not productive as the change has already occurred. VHS is dead, and unlike LPs, no one is going to issue any more movies in VHS format.

Re: Rare VHS Database?
 

Last company stopped a couple years ago.

I think the bigger problem is having your VCR die. That'll start getting more and more expensive to replace since it'll turn into repair guys having to get used parts.

I say think of it this way, look at floppy discs. Computers don't have the drives anymore when you get them and the floppies I had back in the early 90s aren't all working anymore. Yet smart folks made copies of them to hard drives and CD-Rs and we can still use them. The format itself doesn't matter, it's just making the backups so they can be copied over to a more common media type and they still work.

While hardware may be need to be adjusted, or emulators used, they still run the same as they did 20 years ago.

With digital copies of movies, if a technology that's storing them starts to become outdated, it's usually not difficult to be able to convert them to a newer and more supported format.

Re: Rare VHS Database?
 

Or, as the Daoists say, "work is done, then it's gone. Therefore it lasts forever."

At any rate, any Rare VHS databases online out there?

Re: Rare VHS Database?
 

Theoretically that sounds great, but in practical reality it doesn't take into account human inefficiency, forgetfulness, and lack of due diligence. Someone has to put into place a process to regularly back up media in new formats. When you've got a film studio or distributor faced with more and more films shot on digital formats, someone has to keep tabs on everything and back them all up in exactly the way you describe. Supervisors in charge get fired or move onto other jobs, departments get consolidated, companies go out of business and stuff falls through the cracks. Legal battles ensue over ownership of negatives, prints, tapes, digital files, soundtracks, etc., so more stuff falls through the cracks. Films only ten years old may be difficult to restore if the materials aren't all maintained and backed up. Once upon a time, all a studio had to do was store the negative properly and make new 35mm prints when needed. One simple step. And look how that's worked. Thousands of films lost forever. Many cinema classics endangered.

And then take the case of the individual collector. If I don't back up my rare VHS tapes in some way then some day a tape goes bad or gets chewed up by a bad VCR and it's gone. If I didn't think to back up my floppy disks I can't get access to those old documents. If I don't store the memory card from my digital audio recorder or my digital camera properly or back up those files on a hard drive somewhere, and those get lost or damaged, there goes those interviews I conducted and all the pix I've taken since getting the digital camera. How many of the thousands (millions?) of people out there who have stuff worth saving are backing it up properly?

Family photos shot on film and old home movies shot on Kodachrome have lasted for generations. What percentage of their counterparts in the digital era will last that long? I just don't think the art of backing up is sufficiently ingrained in the culture.

Re: Rare VHS Database?
 

Exactly.

The issue is particularly true for VHS tapes. VHS tapes stored tightly packed on shelves "naked" (no case) or only in the cardboard sleeves they came in are subject to degradation by "magnetic shift". The faint magnetic nature of tapes can "pull" on one another. The effect is not dramatic but it is an effect nonetheless. (plastic cases help increase the space between cassettes and reduces the effect)

Gravity can cause the tension of the videotape on the spindles to become uneven. So when a cassette is inserted into a player and tape is fed into the play mechanism the looser portion of the tape gets pulled in quicker and then abruptly slowed when the tighter section of tape is fed. That sudden pull and stop can stretch the tape. (in some extreme cases it can actually break the tape)

That is why for storage purposes, videotapes should be stored fully fast forwarded (it is NOT kind-to-rewind in this case). Rewinding the entire tape before playback helps re-tension the tape. It helps dramatically reduce the instances of stretching the tape.

I have less than a dozen VHS tapes left that I haven't converted to digital media storage. I prioritized my VHS collection and went down the list converting them.... limiting the conversions to homemade tapes and those rare titles that never made it to DVD.

Re: Rare VHS Database?
 

As we've seen with films on 35mm that are lost or incomplete/damaged. It's also why someone ends up with some rare painting or movie sitting in their garage that's extremely valuable.

I'm saying all formats can lose movies but with the digital age, it's much easier to make copies and with more copied, the better the odds there's another one out there when one is lost. Keeping VHS is fine but not having backups when, not if, it fails is awful and with a digital copy, you don't have to worry about and degradation that can occur over the years with the tape. It may still work but the quality won't be getting any better with age.