Isopropyl alcohol safe for VHS-C mold removal?

[Username01]

I'm digitising a few old VHS home tapes and so far all was going more or less well. I've been having some issues with some VHS-C tapes not playing properly but getting them going: FF and a bit of rewind fixes these old tapes. Image seems to be clean to.

I was just digitising them one by one in no particular order and then I got one that seemed a bit dirty, like a bit of white film/dust on top of the tape itself. I put it in FF it and played a bit, the tape seems to play fine. Then it hit me it might be mold. So I rewind it a bit to see if any mold seems to be on the surface of the tape. From what I have seen might be just on the sides of the tape.

I cleaned the VHS adapter with some isopropyl alcohol and I did the same to the VCR. I have now decided to leave this tape for last and I'm now contemplating to eitther digitise it as-is and the clean again the devices or just try and dunk the entire tape in isopropyl acohol.

Are VHS-C tapes ok being sumberged in isopropyl? Case, tape all together? If so, would it be better then to just dunk it in, kill all the mold and then digitise?

[BarryTheCrab]

The first issue is that the alcohol won’t remove the dead mold.

[ge0dude]

This seems to be the best solution so far: https://vhsislife.com/

I would recommend springing for the vent hood, or using your own made out of an in-line fan and a hose/duct.

I would also take the extra precaution of doing it outside.

I would still use a separate device used only for moldy tapes to play the tape after cleaning, since it won't be 100% clean, but it will clean it enough to get a solid capture.

Good luck!

Edit: the best solution is a professional recovery, http://www.specsbros.com/ -for safety and contamination reasons.

[radiokom]

No alcohol will not help. It can only damage tape. Molded tapes should be professionally cleaned (taken out from shells, cleaned and then shells replaced). Find someone who do it professionally and send cassettes to him. And remember - if you reproduced moldy cassette, your adapter, VCR and probably premises are full with that mold spores. And it is impossible to clean adapter and VCR from mold in home. And never play good cassettes in your infected VCR. You should know what you are doing, otherwise it is charlatanism, sorry.

[ge0dude]

Radiokom is right, I should have suggested a professional service before a DIY solution. I believe Specs Bros are the kings of moldy recovery. They are highly trusted. http://www.specsbros.com/

[Username01]

Thanks for the recommendations. I understand the concerns, but these are home tapes and are valuable only to us. Once digitised that's what will be of their life (most probably). I don't think those will be played again. As for cross contamination I'm not sure if the other cassetes where "clean" since they were all stored together. So one moldy cassete might not mean the rest were fine.

I'm in Europe so the specsbros are not an option and I fear we don't have any good service in my country. Maybe if I would send this 1 tape to another place in EU?

If that is not an option, would be great if I could find a way to clean it. I believe the tape content is easily readable by the VCR at least from what I've seen.

If isopropyl alcohol can't kill spores, what is then used?

[ge0dude]

I can't vouch for any of these services, but I found these from a quick search, both are in Europe.

http://www.dvdedit.co.uk/MouldandFlo...VideoTapes.htm

https://www.filmfix.com/en/blog/what...ing-vhs-tapes/

Hopefully someone can come along with a better suggestion, but this is what I found. Good luck!

[radiokom]

You can contact van Eck video services in Holland and ask if they can help (including digitization, they do not offer cleaning as separate service).

[timtape]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Username01

...If isopropyl alcohol can't kill spores, what is then used?

I believe some sort of irradiation is used on the spores. Specs Bros does this as an extra service for customers who need it over and above removing of the actual mould growth. If you only need to successfully digitize the tape(s) and then dispose of those tapes, removing the spores would not be needed, as I understand it.

I dont have names but think it very likely there would be companies and organizations in Europe who could competently remove the mold growth as do Specs Bros in the US. But certainly not everyone who claims to be able to successfully remove mould can actually do it to a high standard.

[aramkolt]

So then the question becomes, what are the professional services using to remove the mold? RTI tapecheck machines don't use chemicals. It just uses dry tissue paper and a sapphire burnisher which is essentially a very flat/hard scraping blade.

I've posted this a few different places, but I'd be surprised if you run into a tape moldier than this. It's a U-Matic electronic press kit for Gulliver's Travels. After running it through a modified VHS is life cleaner using just alcohol dampened PEC pads, I played back a few minutes without any issues. I didn't get around to doing the full transfer until several months after the cleaning and the mold did not return or cause an issue in with virtually no dropouts and there were no head clogs during the entire 1 hour transfer.

Moldy Tape before cleaning.jpg

After:

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Mold is pretty variable though, some are more powdery and others are more likely to act like glue. The glue types are the ones that would be good to have a method of pre-treating to break their cell walls. Bases like potassium hydroxide or ammonia are known to completely dissolve mold cell walls, but I don't know that you'd want to expose tape to a very high concentration of that. I'm guessing there's a happy medium of a chemical that can loosen the mold before it is physically scraped or brushed off.

[BarryTheCrab]

I’ve actually used 97%+ alcohol on the pec pads of my Geneva.
Maybe it’s luck but after cleaning at least 50 tapes over the years I’ve not failed to get a watchable file.
A few tapes look just like those.

[timtape]

Of the number of mold cleaning attempts I've seen demonstrated on YT, only one actually demonstrated the tape being played back with a good capture of picture and sound. It suggests that even they dont have confidence in their mold cleaning attempt, which is a concern.

Only a fool would play such a tape as aramkolt's before treating the mold (interestingly Specs Bros refers to mold as fungus) but if it were possible it would at least give some sort of "before and after" comparison. But failing that we could at least photograph more than just the top edge of the tape pack where maybe 80% of the actual magnetic oxide layer is concealed. I'd suggest photographing the same section of that oxide side before and after, not just the top edge. I'd suggest also putting up a digitised sample of picture and sound after cleaning.

[Username01]

I wanted to give some updates on all of this, but first I'd like everyone for their help.

I have looked into mold cleaning services in EU and my country and to my big surprise I have found a few that do it here, I have then contacted one of them and they seem to be very professional and also helpful in the matter. Their prices are very fair and I'll just get those few tapes sorted.

I wanted to also mentione something about this mold situation. Cross-contamination in this particular scenario is probably of lesser concern as both the tapes and the VCR were stored in the same location, meaning that the spores are and were probably present throught. Why did just a few of the tapes developed an issues is hard to say, but let's say that those had more favourable moisture content. Mind that tapes sitting left or right to it seem probably completly fine.

Chances are that the spores are present in other tapes and the VCR, so best would be to keep them in a dry enviorment moving forward; but after the capture I'm less concerned of their wellbeing.

As for the VCR, I have cleaned it with isopropyl alcohol and will clean it again with peroxide (H202), dry it in the sun (UV), probably two consecutive days. Removing it from the outside during the night. And finally do another round of IPA before resuming the capture. Lastly I plan to captured the professionaly cleaned tapes.

[timtape]

Glad you seem to have found people in the EU who can help with the mold treatment. Also what you have done re the tapes and VCR seems to be sensible. It's recommended when dealing with mold to use a proper respirator mask and glasses to protect the eyes.

[enois]

I remember that in EU a professional cassette cleaner choice could be:

https://www.indelt.it/Eng/TC-Matic.html
video
https://www.cinetecadelveneto.it/dig...tri-magnetici/

These cleaners are also used by Italian state television RAI TV in their tape archiving process.

[aramkolt]

I have seen the TC matic there, but you'll notice that they don't actually say anything about using liquid cleaners, seems to just be tissue paper that slowly rotates to expose a fresh area every so often, which is basically what the RTI tapechek machines do and really no different than a VHS is life type cleaner, other than new areas of the pad being exposed throughout the cleaning, which wouldn't be too hard to do manually.

So my question is whether these professional companies you found will divulge if they do use any liquid cleaners (and what they are), or if it's just dry/mechanical cleaning of the tape like the tapechek/TCmatic there.

I'd also be very careful with H2O2 as it'll rust things. I personally would not use that on any of my VCRs. You could potentially use it on tape, but even then, it'd have the potential to "rust" the oxides on the tape as well, particularly if it is the type of tape that has a back coating. meaning that the back side of the tape is matte (not shiny) like the front plastic surface.

Phil from gotmemories I've seen use electronics cleaner with silicone. I think the idea is that the electronics cleaner part is volatile (like alcohol), but the silicones stay behind and act as a lubricant which is normally present on tapes from the factory, though usually embedded during the manufacturing process.

This is an excerpt from a paper from the library of congress here:

Quote:

"Over time, the level of lubricant in videotape decreases as lubricants are partially consumed every time the tape is played. Lubricant levels also decrease over time even in unplayed, archived tape as a result of evaporation and degradation. The lubricants used in some tapes are oily liquids which are volatile and slowly evaporate away over time. Some lubricants are also subject to degradation by hydrolysis and oxidation, just like the binder polymer, and will loose their essential lubrication properties with time."

https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/...vvanbogart.pdf

[radiokom]

I believe any "wet cleaning" of video tapes (and any tapes) is impossible. At least no one clean audio tapes wet. Video tape cleaning principle is the same. Wet cleaning is used for films, there are many kind of professional ultrasonic cleaners used in archives. They completely wash film like we clean vinyl records with ultrasonic and then vacuum cleaning machine. Tapes degrades with any use of solvent, so it is not a solution. You can not completely wash out anything, so instead of dry mold what can be cleaned relative simple, with proper technology (and remained mold spores killed in professional machines with light etc.) you will get mud what after drying will damage tape completely. Try dry cement for example - it can be cleaned relative simple from any surface even carpet. But add a few drops of water and you are dead.

[aramkolt]

There's another paper here that also discusses cleaning and lubrication for those interested. It is extremely detailed, but also says that lubrication/cleaning techniques aren't that well documented or studied, which seems odd with all of the probably poor playing tapes that this hasn't been looked into further.

https://www.iasa-web.org/sites/defau...C_20180603.pdf

[radiokom]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aramkolt

There's another paper here that also discusses cleaning and lubrication for those interested. It is extremely detailed, but also says that lubrication/cleaning techniques aren't that well documented or studied, which seems odd with all of the probably poor playing tapes that this hasn't been looked into further.

https://www.iasa-web.org/sites/defau...C_20180603.pdf

In my opinion it is not written by professionals, but looks like compilation.

Perhaps a lot would become clearer if when searching for information the words "video", "VHS" were not used, but simply "magnetic tapes". Because a video tape is nothing more than a type of magnetic tape. With its own specifics and parameters, of course, but in principle it is the same.

Here is one useful link for example:
https://richardhess.com/

Richard do the same and has about the same knowledge and equipment as we, but only on the other side of the "pool"

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by radiokom

Tapes degrades with any use of solvent

Isopropyl alcohol is a solvent.

However, at times, using IPA will be required. The tapes that recently nuked one of my JVC decks had some gunk on it in a few spots. Dry rubbing did nothing. I had to wet a Pec Pad with 70% IPA, and gently wipe the small spot. It removed without issue, and the mylar tape appeared fine. (Some spots mid-tape, however, shed oxide.)

Was this the "proper" method? Unsure, it could be argued either way. The key difference is that it was a small spot, not the entire tape. I could let that spot fully dry in about 10s, before finding the next spot. There were about 5 in all, in the first yard worth of tape.

Ironically (yet not unsurprisingly), this was the only non-retail bought blank tape in that project. It was some POS "professional" tape, without marking. I'd bet money it was a crap Fuji Pro tape. (There was nothing pro about those tapes!)

That tape also had bends in it, from prior bad winds. That tape was complete garbage.

Sometimes video is about "making it better", not "making it perfect"**. In this case, 5 dabs of IPA on a Pec Pad, complete with re-shell/re-spool and manual wind, is about as good as can be expected here. (** With actual trying, not using that phrase as an excuse to be cheap/lazy, that's not the same thing.)