I will try to post the noise sample video tonight.
In the meantime the AG-1980 proved to be a great solution after all. By playing the tape in reverse at 1x speed, it tracked clean and clear. The issue that originally caused me to think this method would not prove useful was that by playing in reverse, every few seconds the interlacing lines would go out of sync and then back in sync again a few seconds later. It was a constant back and forth with in-sync and out-of-sync interlacing. Luckily last night I discovered I could correct the interlacing problem using
VirtualDub! So as a note for anyone else, when you've got a difficult-to-track tape, it's worth a try in reverse. You might just have to repair some things in post.
