What to Do with Old VHS Tapes

You usually notice it as fuzz, lines rolling across the picture, colors washing out, or sound dropping in and out. It doesn't happen all at once. Every year the tape sits, a little more is gone, and it doesn't come back.

Where you've been keeping them matters. An attic that gets hot in the summer or a basement that gets damp is about the worst place for tape. If yours have been in either one, don't wait.

The other problem is the machine. The last company still making VCRs stopped in 2016. Every VCR still around is getting older too, and a worn-out VCR can chew up the tape you put in it. That's a big reason not to play your only copy of a wedding video on a machine from a yard sale just to see if it works.

A digital file doesn't wear out when you watch it. Once your tapes are files, you can keep one copy on your computer and one in cloud storage, then send the rest to your brother in Ohio without mailing anything.

Here's what we tell people at the counter: make two copies of the files as soon as you get them. A USB drive in a drawer can get lost or fail like anything else. Two copies in two places is how you make sure you never have to worry about it again.

• VHS. The full-size tapes. Home movies, recorded TV, anything.
• VHS-C. The small camcorder tapes that were made to fit in a VHS adapter. You don't need the adapter.
• 8mm and Super 8 film. The reels from film projectors, the kind with no sound or a thin sound stripe.
• Audio cassettes. Voice recordings, old mixtapes, answering machine tapes, recorded messages.

People often mix up 8mm film and 8mm video. Film is on an open reel you hold up to the light. Video 8 and Hi8 are small plastic cassettes from a camcorder. If you're not sure which you have, bring one in and we'll look at it with you.

Photos, slides and negatives are a separate service. See digitizing for those.

Don't try to fix it yourself, and don't put it in a VCR to see if it plays. A moldy tape can spread mold to the VCR heads and to the next tape you put in. A snapped tape can wind itself around the machine and tear worse.

What to look for before you bring them in:

• White or gray fuzzy spots on the tape inside the window. That's usually mold.
• Tape hanging out of the cassette or wound loose.
• Water damage or a smell like a damp basement.

Put anything like that in its own plastic bag, separate from the rest. When you drop them off, point those out to us. We'll set expectations before anything goes out, so you know which ones might not come back as full recordings.

The whole process, step by step:

1. Bring them in. Any box or bag is fine. You don't need an appointment.
2. We count them with you and write down what you dropped off, so everything that goes out comes back.
3. Pick USB or download for the finished files.
4. We pack and ship them to the lab with tracking. Packing is what we do every day, and we treat these as the only copies you have, because they usually are.
5. We call you when they're back. You pick up your files and every original tape.

This takes longer than a print job. When you drop them off we'll give you a realistic date. It's an estimate, not a promise, and we'll call you if anything changes.

If you've got a box of 40 tapes and aren't sure which ones matter, start with the ones with handwritten labels. Store-bought movies are easy to find again. Birthday parties from 1994 aren't.

Before you get rid of anything, open the files and watch a few minutes of each one. Make your second copy. Then decide.

VHS tapes usually can't go in your regular curbside recycling. Check your town's recycling rules before you put them out.