A box of old tapes.

[Hawk Teflon]

Just went through an old box of tapes. All the audio is awful. Cuts in and out. Video gets a little pixelated from time to time. Every tape. What could have caused this? It wasn't like this when I originally used it to edit. Some tapes are 4 months old. Some are 4 years.

[Evan S]

Are you storing your items in a moist place? My tapes stored in a dry room at a regular room temp.

[Sad Max]

Heat? Magnetism? Reversed polarity in the neutron flux?

[ConspiracyPenguin]

Aliens.

[David W. Richardson]

This may be a stupid question, but are these VHS tapes? If they are, were they recorded on a different VCR from the one you're now playing them on? If so, it could be a matter of heads on the 2 VCRs not being aligned the same. I have 2 Sony VCRs. Tapes recorded on one play fine on both. Tapes recorded on the other have audio dropouts when played on the first machine.

Could it also be simply dirty heads on whatever you're playing the tapes back on?

[Hawk Teflon]

Evan: No, not a moist place. My wife keeps our apartment cool, as well.

Max: Maybe. I don't know. I keep them in an old Airwalk shoe box.

Peng.: Probably. Either them or Elvis.

chap: No, miniDV. Sorry I didn't specify.

I tried a head cleaner on the camera. No dice. These were all shot with a Canon GL2, or an XL1s. I was playing them back on a Sony HVR-A1J. I didn't want to put unnecessary hours on the DVX, but I may have to check with that one.

[Anhar Miah]

Sounds like classical symptoms of either dirt on the head or damaged heads, in which case no amount of cleaning will fix that. play your tape in a different machine, it should work fine.

[Dick Campbell]

Are they recorded in LP mode (vs. SP)? Then they'll probably only play back on the machine that recorded them.

[Hawk Teflon]

Are they recorded in LP mode (vs. SP)? Then they'll probably only play back on the machine that recorded them.

That's no good. I don't have those cameras anymore.

*EDIT* - just talked to a guy at work. He said the problem is probably because the camera I'm watching the clips on (though small) is a DV Cam, wherein the tapes were shot in MiniDV format. I didn't know that would matter.

[Dick Campbell]

Oh yeah, the video plays but the audio does not. I found that out when somebody gave me a tape in DVcam, and I only had a miniDV. You need a miniDV cam