VHS has broken Control Track?
 

Hey y'all, long time no see. Anyways, I've been doing some transfers on and off with knowledge gleaned from this site, but I've stumbled upon a very unusual glitch recently. On one tape I have, there's a moment where it appears like the VCR misreads the control track and tries to play it as an SP recording (it's an EP recording). As far as I can tell, the rest of the recording is in excellent shape (on a scale from 1-10, with one being unwatchably bad and 10 being crystal clear DVD quality, I'd give it a 7 or 8), and the error doesn't happen anywhere else on the tape (or any of my other tapes, for that matter). The recording is a first gen EP recording with Hifi audio, taped over nothing, recorded just about 10 years ago (the recording is from a marathon of Fairly Odd Parents episodes that led up to the premiere of a special that aired Jan. 20, 2003, according to wiki). The tape is a Maxell GX Silver T160, according to the cardboard sleeve, so that probably has something to do with it.

does it do it in any VCR?
those are crappy tapes.

that show is available commercially on DVD and will be in better quality than any VHS tape will.
so doing a transfer (especially of an EP recording) seems kind of a waste.

Yeah, I'm just converting the entire tape (there's some other fairly valuable stuff on there, ie: Christmas videos and etc.) just for the hell of it (that, and I'm too cheap to hunt down the DVD's nah jk :P). I've mainly focused on transferring tapes of shows that are already out mainly in the interest of brushing up my conversion skills, because should anything happen to these tapes, it isn't as big a loss, as say, a school talent show or an über rare concert.

Here's the clip, for those interested:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B_e...ncwTUJqYjhSSUE