Overview A customer dropped off a VHS tape of his wedding and mentioned that it may have two different audio tracks that can be played.

Observations

Regular looking VHS tape. Tape started with a slide show, then the wedding and reception. Tape is about 2 hours. Played the tape in the Panasonic AG5210 (standard VHS VCR) and a JVC HRS5910U S-VHS vcr ...both had trouble playing the audio for the slide show and no trouble playing the audio for the rest of the tape!

Investigation

(refer to wiki article on VHS tape) VHS tapes started with a linear audio and later linear stereo audio track recorded at the upper edge of the tape. In 1984 JVC developed a Hi-Fi stereo audio system that embedded the audio into the video recording. To maintain compatibility with the older system the audio track was duplicated on the linear stereo audio track. The quality of the Hi-Fi audio is second only to the CD quality. Because there can be two stereo audio tracks, Hi-Fi and linear, there can be two different audio tracks. It seems though that many VCR's will only play one of the tracks, either Hi-Fi or linear.

Solution

Use our Sony SVO-9500MD S-VHS Hi-Fi vcr deck. This deck has a switch to select the audio track, labelled AUDIO (selections: Hi-Fi, Mix, Norm). Run the tape through twice, once using Hi-Fi, and once using Norm. Then in Vegas we can create a project with the video and the two different audio tracks.

Playing the tape on the Sony SVO-9500MD S-VHS I discovered the two audio tracks!