Can the tracking issues in this video be fixed?
 

This is a VHS tape of a TV show broadcast around 1986. I'm curious if the tracking/errors in it can be fixed?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2Nfze_B8JA

If the re-encoded sample looks anything like your original capture, no. Those streaks and hops are misalignment/mistracking errors and scanline sync and frame timing errors. If that's the download site's encoding work, it's bad deinterlacing and such a low bitrate that objects are drowning in macroblocks and a blizzard of other compression artifacts.

Other than info that the linked sample is from a VHS of a TV program recorded in 1986, and was maybe recorded directly from tape to DVD (not the best capture method to begin with), we have no other information about the linked video, no details about how it was played, no details about the capture setup, no details about what processing was done. One can only comment strictly from what's on YouTube, nothing else.

No. That's more than just a tracking error.

Tracking errors can actually be fixed, but it cannot be a complex compound error.

I haven't watched the original in a long time, I have no VCR. This was uploaded from a DVD transferred from VHS around maybe a decade ago? I still have the original VHS and it hasn't been played since. As for capture setup...It was your typical home setup (DVD and VCR player all in one I believe). No processing done to the video when uploading to youtube. The DVD capture itself looks like the youtube video does in terms of errors.

What would cause these errors if it's the tape (the misalignment/mistracking, scanline sync and frame timing errors)? I have another tape from 1986 (VHS) that looks almost brand new, as of the other day when I played it at a friend's house who has a VCR.

The simple answer IMO is that there's very little anyone can do with the tracking distortion. Even if one tried, it often comes down to tedious frame-by-frame work that begins with Avisynth and goes far beyond that. When the misalignment changes geometry as it appears in this video, you're up the old creek. There are too many problems here.

A DVD combo is one of the lowest quality means of digitizing VHS. Some of them have decent DVD recorder sections but none of them have good tape payers. Some DVD combos have some form of elementary line and frame tbc activity, but if the combo that was used had that feature it was unable to manage poor tracking effects.

Those issues aside, if the original VCR that created the tape was misaligned, the tape would not play properly in another player unless you could exactly duplicate the same misalignment in another player, which would be very tricky if not impossible. If the original VCR had good alignment but the DVD combo did not, the tape might play correctly in a better VCR. If the tape itself is badly damaged, it's unlikely that any player could play it without problems of one kind or another.

The problem with YouTube samples is that what YouTube does to them is yet another pot of glitches, so it's difficult to separate YouTube problems from capture problems.
:hmm:

The source video needs to be re-captured.
If you still have it, and wanted it professionally restored, Contact Us.

Well, youtube aside, do the problems steam from more from the original taper (the person taping it from TV to VHS) doing a crappy job, their VCR being bad, or the age of the tape?

The thing is, I wouldn't want mind the tracking issues, the lines at the top or bottom, but the video "jumping" is what is annoying. Can THAT error be corrected?

It's almost never age. It's generally the VCR.

I only accuse a person of being stupid (ie, doing a crappy job) if they continue to stubbornly use crap after being told it was crap. I ran into that a lot of the 90s, with those super-$hitty GoVideo dual decks. Those things butchered video, and added a crazy amount of timing errors that even a TBC cannot fix!

I'd have to see how the tape reacts to a quality deck.