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? I actually tried this experiment back in 2002 when I had a little too much extra time on my hands. Using two VHS tapes, I copied the footage back and forth until it deteriorated beyond being watchable. If you’re bored enough, check it out.
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May 26, 2010 at 1:04 pm
Haha great experiment james! I always wondered this too
keep it up!
ps: what about BETA ? :-p
May 26, 2010 at 1:10 pm
I worked for a printshop so I once did the same experiment with photocopies. it turns out you get even less generations out of photocopies, depending on the machine. and that’s with using new paper every time, you reused the tapes and probably stretched the hell out of them.
also, the clip you used just gets funnier the more times its viewed in succession. great foresight on that one!
May 26, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Haha awesome! I wonder what Beta would be like if you did the same thing XD Hey from the UK by the way
May 26, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Lol, such a stupid experiment.
I LOVE IT !!!
May 26, 2010 at 1:17 pm
Cool — how many copies did it take?
May 26, 2010 at 1:32 pm
You should hold a contest to see if anyone can guess/count how many times the VHS was recorded. I tried to but failed because i was laughing so hard.
May 26, 2010 at 1:51 pm
Congratulations James, you just admitted to making the very first youtube poop that pre-dates youtube.
That was actually pretty interesting. I knew about generation loss, but aside from audio copies I might have made, I haven’t seen the full effect. I guess as each copy is made, less and less is transfered over to the new copy.
It is also a perfect metaphor for imbreeding(and explains so many people).
May 26, 2010 at 1:55 pm
After about 1 minute it starts to resemble some of the mucky movies i saw as a teenager which had been copied quite a lot.
May 26, 2010 at 1:59 pm
How interesting that the sound of the punch remains almost clear until the end. I remember how we used old VHS tapes for recording again and again. Damn I miss these times.
May 26, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Whoah, the colours!!!!
May 26, 2010 at 3:01 pm
Reminded me of “Decasia”, a film that consists of decaying film material from older films. It’s somewhere between boring and fascinating.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decasia
There are some excerpts on youtube.. awesome soundtrack as well, really creepy.
May 26, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Fucking amazing James, I loved it!
May 26, 2010 at 3:17 pm
The end reminds me of being 13 and trying to watch the playboy and similar channels on cable by flipping back and forth. You’d catch a glimpse, then it’d be complete fuzz, then flip back to catch another glimpse. Kids these days have it so easy.
May 26, 2010 at 3:18 pm
Nice , just made an account to tell that you’re awesome James.
Greetings from the Netherlands.
May 26, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Lol. I think this is my first comment on the site, but, I’m a long time watcher.
May 26, 2010 at 3:24 pm
Im surprised it lasted that long, I was expecting maybe 10 times but im pretty sure it was atleast 20.
May 26, 2010 at 3:35 pm
Wow… Now imagine you’re watching this really drunk or on drugs.
May 26, 2010 at 4:08 pm
uuuuuuhh im gonna punch you now LOL awesome experiment
May 26, 2010 at 4:22 pm
I would watch it if Bliptv worked :@ unless you put it on youtube but that doesnt help the problem that i cant watch any spoony or angryjoe
oh well i’m guessing it’s an awesome video anyway 
May 26, 2010 at 4:23 pm
I counted 61 copies. Holy crap!
May 26, 2010 at 4:26 pm
Board James indeed!
May 26, 2010 at 4:29 pm
Could you start a new segment called experimental James? Kind of a Have you Ever Wondered What Happens When….
May 26, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Man this vid needs some fucked up IDM on it
May 26, 2010 at 4:57 pm
Dude- I found this to be VERY scary! Something creepy about an old video tape…I expected a damn screamer!
Great job! Thanks for sharing an awesome older project!
May 26, 2010 at 5:16 pm
Oddly enough, I thought the audio quality was getting better and better for a while
May 26, 2010 at 5:21 pm
Well that was…annoying.
May 26, 2010 at 5:24 pm
I tried that same thing once.I have a huge collection of bootlegs in my closet from glam rock to black metal .I used to buy sell and trade online for years back till about 2003.Some day ill transfer them all to dvd little by little. Might take a few years to do that,lol.
May 26, 2010 at 5:25 pm
that shit was trippy..
seemed like some sort of psychological brainwashing video
“YOU WILL KILL THE MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTERRRRRRRRRR!”
May 26, 2010 at 5:28 pm
Nice experiment. It would be even better, if you displayed the actual
Nr. of copies
May 26, 2010 at 5:44 pm
My count reached 65 copies. I’m I right?
Good experiment. I’ve had that in my mind for many years. Some of my old VHS tapes had/have poor quality and now I know more or less which number of copy was my copy
Thanks James!
May 26, 2010 at 6:27 pm
haha quite funny I guess…. acid trip at it’s best.
May 26, 2010 at 6:33 pm
Must… go… punch… my… wife… hard… too…
May 26, 2010 at 6:36 pm
Punch you now….Punch you now….puhhhhh rooorr, haha my god that sounded demonic at times, Awesome james
May 26, 2010 at 6:44 pm
Oddly enough, I recorded this video to my old VHS player, and when I dubbed it back and watched it, I got a call saying I’d be dead in 7 days. What the hell does that mean?
May 26, 2010 at 6:46 pm
I think my speakers started going haywire the minute so many copies were shown! Then again my speakers have always go haywire whenever I started watching a Blip video!
May 26, 2010 at 7:06 pm
You picked the perfect video clip for this experiment. Funny as hell, even when it’s nearly unwatchable.
Also, I agree on the punch sound coming in so clearly every time being awesome.
May 26, 2010 at 7:20 pm
Man that was funny.
Punch you hard to now!
May 26, 2010 at 7:29 pm
This reminds me of watching the local religious channel. I guess I understand why it looks like that now. lol
And just like the religious channel, this actually has a lot of potential for being frightening. I think an eleventh generation VHS clip could be used effectively to create some kind of post-apocalypse news program. You could have an anchor talking about the end of the world and it’s all crappy quality, and then he throws it to the reporter in the field and zombies or some virus or WHATEVER is killing people and the audio and video is all messed up. I think that would be terrifying.
May 26, 2010 at 7:29 pm
I was so used to seeing the same clip over and over that my mind started making out the actual image. In short, even though the quality got worse, It didn’t for me.
May 26, 2010 at 7:32 pm
You can tell the head on the vcr was heating up just like the tape because of the constant abuse without a rest, and very slowly stretching the tape out on the constant recording. Good little project though. It sort of puts into perspective what a hot vcr head can eventually do to a tape constantly.
May 26, 2010 at 7:48 pm
Hahahah, reminds me of Steve Reich’s “Come Out”, but on VHS. You’re avant-garde, man!
May 26, 2010 at 7:54 pm
the audio seems to get better at first.
May 26, 2010 at 8:17 pm
How many times can you watch a VHS tape before it becomes unwatchable?
May 26, 2010 at 8:35 pm
so thats what happened to some of my tapes in the past when i did things like that rofl
May 26, 2010 at 8:38 pm
I guess its really natural that any copied video that’s copied again and again and again slowly decreases the quality…
While watching the videos getting crapier and crapier, I starting to get creep out by the audio (><)
May 26, 2010 at 8:46 pm
and thats why i use disk based media…
May 26, 2010 at 9:10 pm
I wanna do that effect for my memory sequence in my insane movie it gets more deteriorated each time u try to remember
May 26, 2010 at 9:51 pm
FUCK! …
So annoying… I can’t believe I just watched that.
May 26, 2010 at 10:16 pm
Well a counter would have been nice.
May 26, 2010 at 10:30 pm
Seems like they used this same trick to scramble the Playboy channel back in the 90s
May 26, 2010 at 10:53 pm
Somehow I find this disturbingly more scary the longer I watch it. Freaks me out in a weird way. ^.^
May 26, 2010 at 11:03 pm
Is the same for CDs and DVDs, those that you burn in your home, in a few years, they are not gonn work, even games and movies that you buy in a store, those have a longer life span, but they are gonna stop working in some years, even sealed games
May 26, 2010 at 11:07 pm
I’m going to have nightmares for weeks
May 26, 2010 at 11:35 pm
Guess this means we’re all gonna die in 7 days, right?
“Before you die you see……some guy knock this shit outta an innocent bystander”
XD
May 26, 2010 at 11:47 pm
lol its a question that has plagued man since the dawn of time…….. well since the dawn on VHS anyway
May 27, 2010 at 12:08 am
And to make the music for soap opera in the 80′s
i miss those blur porn movies
lol
May 27, 2010 at 12:20 am
SO… How many times?
May 27, 2010 at 12:23 am
looks neat with a crescendo sound track (explosions in the sky). the music gets bigger and bigger and the quality gets shittier and shittier
i like
May 27, 2010 at 12:43 am
…so basically it just slowly turns into Suicide Mouse?
May 27, 2010 at 1:45 am
My friend’s dad has some old Judas Priest concert footage on VHS about the same quality as the middle of this video.
Sweet experiment, James. Something I’ve always wondered too.
May 27, 2010 at 1:53 am
I used to tape star trek episodes and was able to fit 11 episodes on an 8 hour tape. After a lot of viewings the picture was crap.
May 27, 2010 at 2:17 am
CREEEEPY!!!!!
May 27, 2010 at 2:28 am
So how many times did you copy the tapes?
By the way, just as Vidaluko says, CDs and DVDs will stop working after some years. My dad bought some Bob Marley and Accept CDs back in the 80′s and we had to buy a completely new CD player in order to play them. They wouldn’t work in the car, computer, DVD player, nowhere!
May 27, 2010 at 2:47 am
actually they did tests on dvds they would work longer than our lifetimes buried in our backyards as long as no one scratches them.
May 27, 2010 at 3:19 am
Somehow this starts to remind one of a weird trip..
May 27, 2010 at 3:22 am
I also wonder if they did this to make the Dharma initiative videos look old.. lol.. I always thought it was a nice VHS effect, and wondered if it was actually them deteriorating it on a VHS or if there’s some effect they applied.. if so it worked well.
May 27, 2010 at 3:28 am
Funny, the same thing happens to me after I watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory too many times…but that’s only if I take my special vitamin.
May 27, 2010 at 3:35 am
Here’s a thought:
What if you re-edited the Mr. Bucket review, but every so often you placed segment from this into it?
It wouldn’t make a lick of sense, but DAMN would it be creepy!!!
May 27, 2010 at 4:24 am
That’s pretty entertaining. I wonder how long before someone does some techno remix of “Punch you now… SMACK… punch you hard, too…” over and over using this footage, because it kind of started sounding like that after awhile.
May 27, 2010 at 5:58 am
Am I going to die in seven days?
May 27, 2010 at 8:14 am
Woooah … That was psychadelic. I’m in a trance!
Come to think of, what a shitty format VHS is anyway.
May 27, 2010 at 8:19 am
Even though this is an experiment, this is a great example of contemporary video art. The repetition and gradual distortion of video would be something I find at a contemporary art exhibit.
May 27, 2010 at 8:20 am
I like the part where the quality gets worse
May 27, 2010 at 10:42 am
I counted 62 until crash, and it’s all black.
I think I was at 46 when it was impossible to watch it correctly, and see everything and sound is off-synch/out too much.
May 27, 2010 at 11:27 am
At around 1:15 – 1:20 I was thinking REEEEEEMIIIIXXX
May 27, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Funny thing. We’re currently in the process of making new things old… like copying (old horror movies, and b-c productions) from DVD to VHS – just for the sake of old times and some bottles of delicious beer.
May 27, 2010 at 12:32 pm
I have an OLD copy of E.T. that was recorded from TV. I’m surprised that it still even plays.
The interesting thing is that the degradation of the tape makes it now look like the movie was filmed with an old, poor quality camcorder.
It kind of makes the movie look/sound creepy…
May 27, 2010 at 12:36 pm
I have wondered what would happen if I copied the same clip over and over, thanks for showing the result!
May 27, 2010 at 1:39 pm
I kept thinking some dead chick would show up
May 27, 2010 at 2:58 pm
For some reason, the ending part where everything degenerates into a chaotic mess reminds me greatly of the ending of the Giygas fight at the end of Earthbound.
May 27, 2010 at 3:18 pm
WOAH!
I was just playing some good old Silent Hill 2 and now after this video I’m seriously crept out! >.<
May 27, 2010 at 3:58 pm
With an erotic scene, this would be more fun
May 27, 2010 at 4:14 pm
This would make a great ringtone!!!!!!!
May 27, 2010 at 5:52 pm
I especially like the audio degeneration, and it could come in useful. It reminds me of the recording Madeline Stowe makes in 12 Monkeys–the one that gets all fucked up in the future.
May 27, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Only james would have the balls to do this test.
or is it just the lack of brain cells?
Either way I’ve been a fan for years and Just now signed up to leave a comment.
Great Work,
You have the only youtube channel that I like more than mine.
May 27, 2010 at 6:36 pm
I counted how many times the footage was copied: 64 times.
By the 5th time, the tape was starting to show “ghosting” effects (outlines of people in a creepy afterglow). By the 20th or so time, it had lost virtually all colour, and by the 40th or so time, it was borderline unwatchable, and this is coming from a writer, not a filmmaker.
My first comment
May 27, 2010 at 7:22 pm
ummm…
seven days?
May 27, 2010 at 8:12 pm
So does this mean in theory you can only copy a VHS 4 times without any noticable defects? Just interesting to know
May 27, 2010 at 10:02 pm
So did you copy over the same “piece of tape” each time by rewinding and writing to the tape at the same point, or did you allow the tapes to roll forward each time after your original copy? I think writing over the same part of the tapes over and over again would be much, much worse.
May 27, 2010 at 10:34 pm
Wow James this reminds me of 4 things.
1. the vhs copy block on disney vhs tapes.
2. that is 13th and spruce in philly by my college dorms.
3. peter rose’s experimental film.
4. one project i did where i import and write to tape, import repeat to degrade audio
May 27, 2010 at 11:38 pm
That’s actually pretty interesting! What speed did you record this in? SP, SLP… LP? Can the recording speed effect the picture’s loss?
May 27, 2010 at 11:42 pm
Near the ending it somehow started to remind me off the “Suicide Mouse – Unseen Freaky Footage” on youtube, really creepy…
May 28, 2010 at 12:15 am
I’m gonna die in seven days, aren’t I?
May 28, 2010 at 12:21 am
I think I just had like three seizures.
May 28, 2010 at 2:20 am
awesome!
May 28, 2010 at 3:38 am
Halfway through it reminded me of the dream sequence in John Carpenter’s “Prince of Darkness”, very underrated movie!
And yes, we’re all dead in seven days (well, only me- I just saw it tonight, some of you have only five days left… Enjoy them while you can!)
May 28, 2010 at 4:45 am
I did this once with a png file that I kept saving and resaving as a jpg.
May 28, 2010 at 5:23 am
How many punches doe it take to get to the center of a video pop? The world may never know.
May 28, 2010 at 8:35 am
I watched Silence of the Lambs on one of those tapes we used and re-used for recording TV films. The visual artefacts and dodgy sound actually made the experience that much more creepy!
May 28, 2010 at 8:43 am
HA! I JUST walked past that street this morning! Nobody punched me, thankfully.
Cool experiment, I always wondered what this would look like.
May 28, 2010 at 8:53 am
Wow! This gets very bad in the end. The video is hilarious. Especially when it repeats the punch over and over. ( :
May 28, 2010 at 9:39 am
So back in the day with the scrambled porn channels, I guess it wasn’t the bad reception. Just a bunch of movies that had been bootlegged beyond recognition.
I think I want that punch as an animated .gif
May 28, 2010 at 9:40 am
This seriously makes me feel like I’m on acid. the subtle loss of clarity and how it loops towards the end….. ah mah gawd. but yeah- I remember having to record on VHS to watch skateboarding vids my friends had… we had issues like this. or like just a little section would be mucked up. I like this . I think James should throw stuff up that he experimented with while on his journey to current movie stardom.
May 28, 2010 at 9:47 am
The site’s new look looks like sheeeeit.
May 28, 2010 at 10:27 am
great work
I did something like this at college, with a camera pointed at a TV screen.
But you’ve got to love that bootleg look.
I am sitting in a room.
May 28, 2010 at 11:29 am
Shouldn have used Scotch..
“Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away. Re-record, not fade away.” etc..
May 28, 2010 at 12:04 pm
So … how many times was it ? or was it actually up to us to count/guess ?
Even though Israel Da Mota Mendes says it kinda rude, i have to agree, the old skin for this website was better, or is it just my browser again
Anyway’s it was a fun clip and it showed very nicely how i remembered the copy’s i’ve seen way before the DVD era
May 28, 2010 at 3:26 pm
Heh, gotta love how in the end the video looks like just another day at Silent Hill.
May 28, 2010 at 4:05 pm
Really interesting video. The quality goes a lot faster than I thought and the way it skips and repeats frames eventually is pretty bad.
Can I suggest putting an epilepsy warning on this video, though? I’m not epileptic, but like danny_hegel said, it feels like you’re on acid and it flashes a lot especially on full screen.
May 28, 2010 at 4:25 pm
I might be stating the obvious, but those artifacts that start appearing later on are probably caused directly by the VCRs used themselves, rather than degradation of image by re-dubbing. So you’d probably get very different results depending on VCRs used. I mean, I would just expect the image to get less and less defined, rather than having all those different blocky shapes and colors come from nowhere. Probably something to do with processing of the image by the machine.
May 28, 2010 at 4:43 pm
Mike Oldfield did this when he was recording the theme tune for the Exorcist. He didn’t have a multitrack, so he kept rewinding the tape and recording again to add another instrument. Eventually, he wore all the oxide off the tape and had to start again.
Looks like the colours are all going out of synch and the noise is pretty predictable given the type of electronics inside. It reminds me 100% of an 80′s porno from a home camera that guys have been swapping on VHS for decades.
And YAY! I finally have an account, after years of watching James’ videos over and over and over and over…..
May 28, 2010 at 5:01 pm
TRIIIIIPPY! *_*
May 28, 2010 at 7:33 pm
Very interesting to see
May 28, 2010 at 7:55 pm
MisterE, it actually appears as though James was using good tapes and quality VCRs for this exercise. This isn’t the only video that’s attempted to explore VHS generation loss, and others have shown horrible degradation within ten generations. An example can be found here: http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=74498&big=2x
By the way, if anyone cares, I counted at least 62 generations that were exhibited in this video.
May 28, 2010 at 10:19 pm
Reminds me of the old anime fansub tape trading days. I’ve seen a few tapes about that bad.
May 28, 2010 at 11:02 pm
So is it getting worse due to the kind of copying effect like how if you copy a paper in a copier it gets more and more loss of detail or is it because the video itself is breaking down due to the numerous copying sessions?
May 28, 2010 at 11:35 pm
ahhhhaaahhh, I have a splitting headache now. I had a few VHS tapes that had been recorded over so many times that the “auto-tracking” just gave up on them.
May 29, 2010 at 12:33 am
It´s 02:32 A.M. …
And I found this funny!!
May 29, 2010 at 3:19 am
Wow how many times did you copy it for it to get that bad?!
May 29, 2010 at 10:58 am
I couldn’t stop laughing at this video xDDDD
May 29, 2010 at 4:12 pm
Oh fuck man!
I didnt noticed that.
Remember my first Batman Returns BETA copy.
My father copied it so many times, until it cant be played.
Really fuck!
May 29, 2010 at 4:13 pm
My god…at the end it sounds just like chestburster from the Alien series…
May 29, 2010 at 5:42 pm
Thankyou for doing nerdy awesome shit like this. I’ve always wondered this very same question, and now I have my answer =D.