Tape has strange squiggly lines?
 

Rescued from a basement several years ago and never been able to get it to playblack in a camera though when you fast forward you can see a picture, recently I discovered how to alter the guides in a machine and using a Sony EV S9000 I managed to get the bottom half of the picture to play but with these strange squiggly lines in the top half and I'm flummoxed as to what the cause of that is?

We're looking at a photograph of a monitor showing a VirtualDub (or other capture program) preview window, right?

For this sort of issue you really want to take all digitization out of the equation and view on a CRT.

(Post is 6 days old so I'm probably too late unless OP is subbed to the thread.)

Thanks! Can you point me to a ref as to why digitisation needs to be taken out of the process, I'm interested to get this tape fixed and will happily buy a crt if I can understand what I can do with it when it arrives, thanks again.
Sorry! for late response...... Been away on holiday and then ill with Covid (self punishment)

Science.
Scientific method.
Process of elimination.

Haha... I think you misunderstand me, what am I eliminating by getting a crt is there a thread that explains the process? I cannot workout in my head how a different type of monitor makes a difference.
Thanks.

Because capture cards behave differently from a TV, TV is built in line and/or field delay and can fix errors in the signal, Capture cards don't. If you hookup the player to a regular TV and you still have the problem it's your player/tape, If the problem disappears it's your capture card, In that case a better VCR with line TBC is needed, or keep your VCR and get a device that stabilize the signal, sometimes a DVD recorder of a certain brand can act as a stabilizer if put in passthrough mode such as DMR-ES15. This is not a plug and play task, the more you learn, the more Ahah! moments.

Aha!! I didn't explain myself properly.
I have several different playback machines and Datavideo TBC 3000 into a Blackmagic Intensity Pro.
The tape shows nothing when played in either digital or analogue players but by manually altering the guides on either of these players I get half a picture with the squiggly lines, when I've seen something similar to these squiggly lines previously they've been related to dirt on the tape and a bit of FF/RW and cleaning has removed it, in this case it appears to be something different, this is a unique one of a kind recording from 1987 and therefore well worth saving

A TV is still required when doing VCR miss alignment, An oscilloscope is ideal though. Never align or miss align a VCR while monitoring a capture card.