minidv

Rewind A VHS Tape Manually But Fast

Overview  Sometimes it is necessary to rewind a VHS tape manually.

Options Tried

We tried rewinding in a VCR and it got stuck in two different machines!!!

We tried rewinding the tape in the VHS cleaner and it did not move.

Solution

We rewound the tapes manually using:

electric drill (one end of socket bit into chuck), socket bit (big socket set - one of the bits - left or right most - in those little bit trays), plug bit into smallest sized long extension, extension "plugged" into 8mm brass adaptor, and brass adaptor fits into VHS reel hub.  Make sure to push in release (screw driller into hole in back of cassette - middle near top).

TRY BY HAND FIRST with the extension and etc before trying the drill as you have more control if something goes wrong.  Once it works by hand then use the drill.

Note

This should work on other tapes, but the extension and brass piece may need to be changed so as to fit the tape reel hub.

PLEASE ADD further procedures for other types of tapes.

RAW Materials

These materials refer to media that we have captured or obtained, and are cataloged according to the source media type.  These typically materials that are included raw-structure

  • With our current structure, most RAW materials get stored on the M: drive.
  • The most common folders are DigiCam, Scanned, and MiniDV.
  • The M drive is automatically backed up once a day.
  • All MiniDV tapes we upload get stored under M:/RAW/MiniDV/
  • The N: drive does not get backed up, and is intended for materials we have copies of in other locations (such as our MiniDV footage)
  • "RAW" folders can be stored on any drive, just make sure to maintain the same structure, always.

The proper structure is as follows:

For cataloged material types such as MiniDV:

*Root folder on drive* /RAW/ *Source Media Type* / * MEDIA FILES *

For other non-cataloged material types:

*Root folder on drive* /RAW/ *Source Media Type* / *YY-MM-DD Description Label* / * MEDIA FILES *

In rare cases, you may want to use a RAW folder within a project structure.  This this case, you can simply create the same structure within the project folder.

Also, there is one last exception to the structure rule.  In the scenario where you simply will only have many of one group of item, such as only DigiCam photos, you can recreate the structure with hyphens instead of creating sub-directories.  For example, to combine the last two exceptions, you can do the following: K:/My Project/RAW - DigiCam - Paul's Camera/09-02-16 Work/.