VHS mould? Anyone seen this before?
 

This image was much more blurrier than I realised, but hopefully it's sufficient.

Attachment 12212

Some nice red circles to highlight some of it:

Attachment 12211

Has anyone come across this before? I'm considering putting these tapes in my machines and just doing a lot of fast forward/rewinds to try and clear it.

EDIT: Gah, I forgot this website does this with images. Does anyone know why? How am I supposed to link images...

Here's the direct links:
https://i.ibb.co/sVsFN1Z/IMG-20200711-203343.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/M8hxTbD/image.png

The advice on this website worked for me. Definitely take all safety precautions (wear a ventilator/mask, complete the steps in a well ventilated area, outside if possible)

http://www.lunchmeatvhs.com/blog/res...d-chip-parton/

I bought a $5 VHS player at Goodwill to complete the recovery process above - I definitely recommend against running moldy tapes through any good VHS deck you want to use in the future...it won’t end well.

For what it’s worth, I cleaned tapes with far heavier mold than the tape visible in your photos, and the tape played back almost perfectly, so the method above should work for you. Aside from the $5 cleaning deck, I have one VHS deck dedicated exclusively to playing recovered moldy tapes, just on the off chance a few spores remain.

That's a great link, thank you!

Attached all images directly to forum posts, don't link from elsewhere.

Never put moldy tapes into VCRs. You'll ruin it for all future tapes, and infect all other tapes you own.

FF/REW can work, but then you have spores all in the deck, in your home, on you, etc. NOT GOOD! There have been many posts in recent years about UV(B) lights, look into it. Search for those.

Care in cleaning must also be taken.

I can suffer anaphylactic shock from spores from certain locales. So be careful!