VHS Generation loss

This is how you make someone insane

Brings me back to trying to watch the "bad" channels.

Can actually do a gif for this? please.

I actually tried to count along but lost it at like 10...Man I must've been bored! LOL

I found myself getting strangly fustrated and annoyed towards the end of the video, am man i think im losing it ...like the time i watched and listened to Stewies annoying laugh on Family Guy, i felt like i should be in padded cell !!! Make it STOP....PUNCH YA HARD TOO, P..P..P..P..PUNCH..P..P..PUNCH YA HARD T..T..T..TOO !!!!!!!!!

wow that is soo something!! hahahaha u use ur free time in a very good way!! and how many times did it take?

Madness. MADNESS!!!!

Can't wait for someone to remix this into a song.

So how many times was that?

Try a DVD-RW next...If they exist, or Im just thinking cd's...

Whoa! James! There is a girl on my computer monitor! A porn channel?

Whenever I hear VHS'ed music (like the way it wavers after 30 seconds or so)...all I can think about is Troma Video.

thats 62 times. ohh, but the qulity really drops at 5th time already, and i got VHSes that stood 10 times and no hug quality loss yet.

That's some terrible experiment, like a real nightmare. Or like a Nine Inch Nails music video from the old times. What's this footage about? How's hitting who? How many times you copied it back and forth?

Man. That guy's jaw must have hurt after being punched so many times

I bet this video was murder to compress near the end. I'd love to see the kbps graphed from beginning to end if it were encoded VBR.

This may be of interest to you

What happens to a youtube video after re-uploading it 1000 times?

http://mashable.com/2010/06/03/youtube-i-am-sittin...

Keep up the great work. This website has been one of the highlights of the internet.

Hey the log-in has changed. used to be you logged in and had to open another instance (tab) of cinemassacre because it would log you into a forum page that didn't link directly back here.

But now it does this flawlessly. Whatever has changed, James, I'm thanking you for it ^_^

Now on to my normally scheduled comment:

The most I ever re-recorded over a tape was 6. I had a shortage of tapes back in the early 90's when I did most of my direct-from-HBO (or any other movie channel) records.

Not quite as talented as you, James, but I did have it down to a science about how long it would take before recording, and so I would do test record runs to see if it would work, for about the first 10seconds of each tape. So all of my boot-legged recorded movies have the first 10 - 30 seconds really garbled...

But I never did it this many times. I think I counted over 30 instances in this little clip.
Although I will admit that over the years, our Betamax tapes looked a bit like instance 10 - 15 of your re-records, due primarily to their age. I know if you properly care for and preserve, tape can last a long time, but it just doesn't last quite as long as CD tracks (and yes even those have an effective lifetime).

Thanks for sharing, James.

I love good old VHS. I don't know about copying tapes. But we watched a porn tape a friend stole from his dad that we ended up with so many times that is unwatchable.

When I found it back years later I decided to just snap it in half. :D

Lol

VHS was so reliable :D

i think i was sucked into hell near the end.

At then end of this video, this weird girl crawled out of my computer monitor.

punch ya hard too

Classic! Pure Gold, as always.

I so totally miss VHS, this was a major throw back.

At the end it's a little creepy. Did you ever see Event Horizon?

Thanks James I nearly had a seizure and everything is flashing pink and green before my eyes. Nah but it actually is interesting to see the gradual drop in quality.

The first few times it made me miss vhs, and old 80ies movies. The odd false note in the music is just classic really. You just don't get that on dvd

funny your all saying that VHS suck's go watch bbc.co.uk/click watch last weeks show (31/05/2010 first aired) then you'll get Idea of how much DVD's suck, some of DVD's only lasted a year in there test 's so if you got wedding pic's or pic's of your kid's FOR GOD'S SAKE DON'T BACK UP ON DVD IT WON'T LAST

reminds me of porno film's I used to get in high school I must have been at least 8 th guy on the chain LOL

I loved watching this.. You probably cheated by putting the tapes on SP rather than EP. Also, once I heard that you used two tapes I thought of the notion that when you're recording over something already recorded, you get a low quality re-recording don't you?

Simulacrum!!!!!!

The way in which James posts this video is on par with all of the shitty games he reviews.

"Have you ever wondered how many times a VHS tape can be copied before the quality gets so bad, you can’t even tell what it is anymore? WELL, FUCK YOU! WE'RE NOT GOING TO TELL YOU!"

I watched the video for the sole purpose of obtaining the answer. Epic fail.

The VHS quality gets pretty crazy after a few copies. I wonder if there is a way to get the same look using filters in Final Cut or Adobe Premiere. Then again, using an editing program might take away some of the fun.

Cool video.

66 times :D

You probably should have just asked Mr. Owl.

That's understandable that it would deteriorate that badly between 2 tapes but that doesn't show how much it would deteriorate after being copied onto a blank tape as if you were giving it to a friend or just making a spare copy. That shows that you shouldn't use the same tapes for a lot of recordings.

@ninjaker he still took off almost 2 months to put it out instead of 1 like he said :( , this new schedule bites i enjoyed when there were more avgn vids but i am still a fan tho but at least keep it consistent!

i wonder what the new projects are that is taking up all his time, Plan 9?

@dannydesktop action 52 was the video for may it was just up early by a communication error

you know whats bullshit? no new AVGN, it's been over a month! my clicking refresh finger is tired :(

Wow...VHS really sucked. (if you were copying stuff, at least)

Someone needs to count lol.

Did someone count? How many times was it xD?

Woooow, even after 3 or 4 times there's a definite quality drop.
No wonder DVDs were invented.

I did something like this once with lossy compression image file formats. I also did one of resizing an image down 25% and back up 25% over and over again to see how badly that would effect it.

We all know the eventual outcome will be something undefinable but its always interesting to watch the transition. Sometimes it helps give you an idea of just how our machines store info rather it be something digital or analog.

So, if you accidentally record something embarrassing, simply copy it a couple of times and done. :D

BigJgolf
100 thanks!

You had a lot of time on your hands.

Weird thing though, is that I used to copy over all my VHS tapes every week recording new episodes of my favorite shows, and they never degraded like this. However, all my old tapes from the 80s that had only ever been copied over once gradually got worse and worse over the years, until they had that rainbowy look and the audio was so heavily distorted as to be barely comprehensible. Every year when we would break out the old Christmas specials and try to watch them, they just got worse and worse.

Also, a funny thing is that during the Grinch who Stole Christmas, Hulk Hogan randomly cut in ripping his shirt open and screaming.

bbankrablo2

if the power button is pressed in than yes that's what it's supposed to do

That reminded me of the end of earthbound

I saw this test being done on a science programme on the BBC about 8 years ago. Dr Robert Winstone used the tape copying as an analogy for the human cells and why our bodies deteriorate as we age.

Great experiment; however, you didn't post your results. I'm curious as to how many iterations it took to get so bad, what type of vhs tapes did you use, etc...

Yeahhh awesome! I always wanted to know that!
and I'm not kidding ^^
European VHS tapes last longer because of the lower framerate being 25fps.... the American framerate SUCKS! it's like.... 29,97 fps? ...
WHY?

//////
mr34vspec May 31, 2010 at 5:16 am Commented:
Holy shit, this is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t stop watching this for a half hour.

It just gets better as the tape degenerates and the duration of the clip gets shorter. The footage and the line is brilliant, perfect delivery. I nearly pissed myself. Thanks for the laughs, James.
//////

@mr34vspec I don't think it got shorter he just edited it like this so you don't need to watch the hole thing over and over again.