Some of my VHS tapes actually got this bad because I’d copy my favorite shows from one source to the next to remove commercials, then again to make compilations. I had no concept of signal degradation or loss at that age!
There was one time in my childhood that I made a copy of a tape and the result appeared to look better than the original. I didn't understand how that could be possible. It turned out that because VCRs often employ a sharpening filter, the copy looked sharper to my naive eyes, even though detail had been lost.
@@RGBReact I'm pretty confident there's some sort of thing that decreases the quality of videos when downloading them, so that 10 times then you see what this guy is talking about
Do you know Jesus Christ can set you free from sins and save you from hell today Jesus Christ is the only hope in this world no other gods will lead you to heaven There is no security or hope with out Jesus Christ in this world come and repent of all sins today Today is the day of salvation come to the loving savior Today repent and do not go to hell Come to Jesus Christ today Jesus Christ is only way to heaven Repent and follow him today seek his heart Jesus Christ can fill the emptiness he can fill the void Heaven and hell is real cone to the loving savior today Today is the day of salvation tomorrow might be to late come to the loving savior today Romans 6.23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. John 3:16-21 16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. Mark 1.15 15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel. 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Hebrews 11:6 6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Jesus
To be honest, although I like analog horror, I HATE how it has fucked up the internet's mind to the point everyone associates anything that looks like old Polaroid picture quality or VHS generation loss (or VHS "filter") to horror even when things in question aren't scary per se
@@agentepolaris4914 I totally get your point, but I think it's oddly scary nonetheless, I called it analog horror because I couldn't think of any other way to describe it. But still old vhs videos are at least a bit disturbing to me, doesn't matter what the video is about.
This is really scaring me, because when I was 13 I started having a reoccurring dream of an event but it was VERY badly distorted. It looked exactly like what happens at 0:56. The event was people looking frantic and running, while some stood in their midst just staring at the sky. Some were pointing, some were crying. There was no sound at all, it was so silent that the silence itself was a presence. I still remember the silence of it, but there was sound at the end. At the end I would hear someone shouting 'SHUT IT OFF! HE'S WAKING UP! WE HAVE TO SHUT IT DOWN!!!". The dream would happen only once twice a month, and it went on for about 9 months.
@Mobilis17 because my family never stopped using them and i enjoy old technology so I've actively added more to the already existing family collection, 4/5ths of what i watch is old enough to be on vhs anyway and they're insanely cheap these days, 10 cents each at my local salvation army, for someone who conveniently already owned a vcr 10 cents for a movie is insane
This is exactly how South Park spread across the land when that original "The Spirit of Christmas" came out. I remember taking my 7th generation VHS copy I made from my best friend’s 6th generation VHS copy, and making at least a dozen 9th generation copies of it to pass out to my friends, who in turn made several 10th generation copies to pass around to their friends. It was the first viral video I can remember.
I don't understand analog horror but everyone I know that does is like, at least 10 years younger than me. I'm slowly becoming convinced it's scary to them because they don't understand analog electronics?
@MaxConsumesDeadHamsters that's fair! Everything I've watched in that category always has an air of unease for sure, it's just that there's never any payoff. It's like watching a movie thinking it's a horror but really it's just a thriller at its core.
Everywhere at the End of VHS. This technique would actually make for an amazing narrative short film, I really wish it was longer demonstration, but love it all the same, thank you for sharing.
Back in 2008 (or sometime around then), I made a short film which used this effect almost narratively. But that film wasn't very good. You're right, I should make some actually good short with this effect.
@@japhyriddle Cool! I'd still love to see it, and anything else, should you get the inspiration and idea for this technique! It'd really be beautiful. It is present here though and that is worthy of praise!
It seems to me, the signal would converge to a state such that the VHS degradation ends up producing the same signal. This could be called an “eigenstate” of the complete VHS recording+playback cycle.
It is a good thing they figured out how to have lossless digital audio recording, for example, the Rolling Stones early master tapes are worn out completely and the recordings you hear now are a digitized recording from the last playing. This means that if digital sound recording never happened then there could only be a finite possible number of copies and plays of any one song.
@@lutello3012Yes, but the key difference is that you can now copy as many times as you want without any quality loss whatsoever. Checksums and ECCs ensure that the file can even withstand some degradation of the physical medium, and that you'll know for sure whether it's been changed at all from the original.
@@mezzb Vinyl is a dead-end technology that remains stuck in the 1970s. At least the Compact Cassette continued to be improved right into the 1990s with new magnetic formulations etc. If any retro analog format is worthy of a revival, cassettes are it.
I have to give you credit for taking the rare approach of actually progressing the storyline within your one take. Most RUclipsrs would just show the same exact 5 seconds of footage on repeat as it degrades (assuming other RUclipsrs tried doing this experiment). This approach here is much more engaging.
it's like making a clone of a clone of a clone of you each copy is lesser quality over the previous copy and you are the best quality you there is sadly
I was totally surprised at how many people thought this video was scary. I guess if people's first exposure to VHS artifacts is a horrific one, then that's what they associate with the format. Since I was born in '84, I grew up with the format, and have nothing to fear about its artifacts. This was meant to just be a silly tech demonstration video.
@@japhyriddle And it definitely serves the purpose well, the video is fantastic. It's that fusion of fear and education that intrigued me, taking the VHS artifacts, and giving them a deeper meaning to analog horror than just corruption or an otherwise unnerving presence
@@japhyriddle I was born in 1984 too and the only thing "scary" about a glitchy VHS is the possibility of a broken tape, or worse, a broken VCR. And the anxiety of having to explain to my parents that the VCR might be broken. 😆
Fascinating video ... and brings back memories! Some time between 40 and 50 years ago as a young child, I had a fascination with audio tape recorders. The ability just to record anything that happened around me, and play it back, listened to what just happened AGAIN - sufficiently blew my young noggin to no end. I had a little Lloyd's brand cassette recorder, as my first. A few months into this wonderful new science, I found my dad's big reel-to-reel deck, and ran a crazy experiment - the first recording, was of me just clapping my hands for about ten seconds. On the second recording on the other deck, I did the exact same - just not the exact same 'clapping speed' as the first recording, AND - with the first recording being played back very close to the microphone. Back to the first deck for #3, which now had 2 of me clapping already ... you see where this is going. I remember making it up to a barely tolerable 30 recordings, that sounded like a class room FULL of clapping kids, but the imperfections and high overtones of the early, low quality microphones, soon in those re-recordings would produce an extremely annoying tone just desperate to "feed back"... and I was eventually stuck with that. Funny thing about this was, no one at all believed me, when I told them that there was only one person clapping, and that was me. I hadn't thought about that memory for at least 20 years -- until I saw this video. Thank you!
When I was younger I did a similar multi-recording trick with a normal tape recorder. I found that if you stick a small wad of paper in the cassette shell where the eraser head normally comes up, you can block the erase head and record yourself on top of whatever was there and layer yourself that way.
That sounds really cool. I never thought of iterative recording as a kid. I hated the loss of quality when doing it, so I never would have thought to make an experiment out of it. If only I could go back. The 70s were a great time to be a kid.
Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The end is near, all the prophecies are being fulfilled, moon turning to blood, sun darkening, wars, everyone against Israel, deserts becoming rivers, antichrist rising, but Jesus already arose, He’s here for us.
I think I could probably spend that long talking about the technical details of something like this. But I decided just to make something fun and silly.
My parents had a big laser printer for their home run magazine business. Once when I was messing with it I discovered this concept with the coper function of the printer. This would've been mid 90's. So when I heard about cloning degradation in science fiction shows years if not decades later I knew what they meant.
45 years ago, I was a copy machine repairman. The machines used liquid toner and coated paper...no digital anything. To test repaired machines' optics, focus, etc, we'd make copies of copies of copies of copies of copies, etc. until quality degraded to an unacceptable level, to verify the quality of the repair.@@japhyriddle I think I'll check both my laser and ink jet printers to test the image degradation on modern machines.
Reminds me a bit of a video "what I saw before the darkness" in which someone had used an AI image generator (if I remember correctly, it's styleGAN) and a seed to generate a face. Then, one by one, its neurons were turned off while keeping the same seed, making it seem as if the brain that imagines the face is slowly dying and the face slowly rots or burns away until the moment on which all input neurons were disabled and all what's left is just black pixels
The way I like To think of VHS, is like an abandoned town. A place that once was thriving with life, now a place left behind, stuck In time, empty and In decay. VHS films are similiar To a decaying town In a sense, that this outdated form of media has been replaced by superior tech, which Means no More improvement on this now-outdated tech, leaving what's left of this media To decay and give newer generations an ever degrading glimpse In To the past.
This is art; it made me feel emotions. It's a good metaphor or simile, or whatever for memory. The further from the source, or the moment in real life, the more distorted it is.
That's our post post modern history to a T. It's literally what the first Matrix movie was going on about 20 something years ago. A copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. And eventually people don't realise what the source is.
true we are subject to the second law of thermodynamics which is entropy. macro-evolution never happened and micro evolution is just damage-control (adaptation) as we devolve.
When I was a kid, my parents would often get pirated VHS tapes both from friends and from actual outlets that sold pirated VHS tapes, as well as rental places. You could often tell how many times they were copied by just how horrible the quality was. When I got a little older and sought out to buy actual licensed VHS copies of things I liked, I was kind of shocked to see how good the quality actually was on the original tapes. 😅
How many copies were each clap in this video? Was each copy very forgiving as in each clap would be ten copies. Two claps in this video meant twenty copies?
How many copies were each clap in this video? Was each copy very forgiving as in each clap would be ten copies. Two claps in this video meant twenty copies?
That's so cool. I've never had the opportunity to play with S-VHS. Although I do have a Beta SP deck, which beats SVHS in chroma resolution, but not luma resolution if I recall.
The best part was recording broadcast TV with S-VHS since it was far more noticeable improved quality than regular VHS. I remember doing this with daytime soaps that played during the day so we'd record them to watch at night.
"It was every bit as good as Laserdisc and DVD" No it wasn't. SVHS still had horrible chroma resolution. It was good, but nowhere near as good as even ED Beta or Laserdisc.
Wow, this video made me think about how my childhood memories are slowly fading out. Every now and then I realize that the moments that I know I remembered are not there anymore. That's sad.
Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The end is near, all the prophecies are being fulfilled, moon turning to blood, sun darkening, wars, everyone against Israel, deserts becoming rivers, antichrist rising, but Jesus already arose, He’s here for us.
@@flariz4824 That's not what they were saying. They're talking about how the VHS effect looks and sounds, and the very distorted part is similar to what a lot of analog horror series use.
To answer simply, yes. The effects (artifacts) are caused by analog hardware and tape only. However, in order to ensure a proper sync signal all the way through the many back-and-forth transfers, the footage gets digitized every generation. Any artifacts the digitization process adds to the recursion are very subtle, and are most-likely dwarfed by the ones the VCR introduces.
to be honest most of the visible degredation in earlier copies is caused by highliting interlacing lines over the edges which is not a problem of vhs tapes or players, but of the capture, digitalization and encoding process.
And this is why I love vhs. It's real. It's alive. It's basically video archeology. You can tell who did what to a videotape just by looking at what parts are more warped than others. From rewinds to record-overs. It's all there. #circulatethetapes 📼🍻💙
You might love JPEG as much then, because the encoding technology is literally the same (YUV+color information reduction). Just compress image at 60 enough times to get the desired effect, done.
@@corwin.macleod JPEG uses DCT though which produces artifacts which aren't really nice on the eyes, you'd get a much more accurate effect by simulating NTSC in software
I did something similar with a photocopier on my last day at a very toxic workplace that almost drove me insane. I copied all the forms that they used. Then I replaced all their master forms with the 20th generation copy. Then I walked out.
I sorta feel like memories work that way, losing detail and becoming less clear. By the way that last part with the imaginary knob turning thing, it’s really cool.
I'm an enthusiast for everything that is vintage, especially from the 80s. I have this habit of watching old commercials compilations here on yt and I definitely recognized the look of almost all of them. I wasn't aware of how copying a tape over and over could damage the image, very interesting work, congrats!
I actually ended up here from watching this girls playlist, after I saw her in the comments for an old commercial that was recommended to me because I had been watching old TNN (Spike TV) commercial compilations. 😄
Thank you. Not too much work. I had a way to automate a variable that would select the different generations. Basically a slider bar to choose how messed up it looked.
HiFi Stereo on VHS wouldn't degrade that much - it would degrade and the noise floor would increase, but it wouldn't be that bad. Mono audio on VHS is really crappy even at generation 1. This experiment would be more interesting if the first version was recorded on a decent VHS camcorder and then dubbed only VCR to VCR. The intermediate digital step isn't a perfect copy due to capture limitations. Also PAL would be better than NTSC in this regard. If only I still had my old equipment...
This reminds me of an old video of a guy who uploaded a video to RUclips then ripped it then re-uploaded again and again until it was distorted just like this. Nice video!
From what I've seen digital video definitely seems to be more resilient towards this than analog; the digital demos often go for hundreds or even thousands of generations and the picture is still mostly there and the audio doesn't lose much quality, whereas analog demos typically give up after 20 or so generations. The thing is that digital video is actually capable of exact source reproduction, but then this short video would require like 700MB at 1080p resolution. So for most consumer applications the codec tries to find the areas people are less likely to notice and smear them out to save data, and since it's often the same spots being degraded each time those spots eventually turn to garbage while other portions which get ignored remain surprisingly close to pristine quality. Whereas with VHS exact reproduction is simply impossible, so the losses occur across the board and compound much faster. The flipside of this is sometimes the important information is in the seemingly unimportant areas, so you end up with night scenes where nobody can see what the director intended because the codec simply pooped over everything in the shot
A friend of mine used to record various sex scenes from different films onto one tape. it became known as the toffee tape (Tape Of Fucking For EveryonE). He kept it discretely hidden in amongst his parents VHS collection, marked as a film they would never be interested in watching. One day he came home and noticed all the tapes were missing. His dad had donated their entire collection to a local charity shop. My friends first words "Oh shit, not the fucking toffee tape....". I still wonder who ended up with it and what their response was on first viewing.
Yep! That’s what happens. I’ve been a videotape editor for nearly 50 years. When I started in the business, composite video was the only connectivity option. I started by working on 2” Quadruplex video tape recorders. At that time, this was the standard broadcast format. Over the years, the evolution of videotape and recorders led to the DigiBeta format. SDI connectivity ensured virtual lossless generation transfer. This all changed when video became file based and non linear editing became the standard for editing. I’ve seen an amazing evolution over the years. This demonstration was very cool!
That's so cool that you got to work with 2" quad! What a monster. Did you ever do any physical tape splicing? I have a Beta SP deck right now. I occasionally use it for lo-fi music video jobs when I need something more robust than VHS. Especially if I need to do chromakeying. Old video gear is so fun to work with.
@@japhyriddle Hey! I missed 2” Quad tape splicing by only a few years. We DID have a 2” tape, video or audio, splicing block on display in the studio just to show how it was done in the past. Anyway, by the time I started as a tape operator at age 18, CMX editing systems were in use. Maybe google CMX Editing for a comprehensive explanation. The basic configuration was a computer made by the CMX corporation, PCs and Macs were far in the future, The CMX computer controlled at bare minimum, 4 Quad VTRs. One designated as the recorder and three designated as playback machines. CMX also controlled our Grass Valley switchers to trigger effects at appropriate times. In short, the holy grail of tape to tape “cloning” was the Sony Digi Beta Format. Digi standing for “Digital.” 2 vtrs were connected via an SDI cable and when you made a copy, it basically was an exact copy, a clone, if you will of your original tape. Virtually lossless quality going down generations. Yes, I’ve used Beta SP decks in production and post production. In short, I’ve worked with just about every videotape format that was introduced as the next “new and best” format. I could go on for hours. The only actual videotape splicing I ever had to do was when I had to create repeater reels for trade shows etc. where you would lay your edited piece on a reel of 3/4” videotape multiple times until it almost filled the tape and then had to go to the last piece, cut the tape there, pull out the excess unused videotape and splice the end of your piece to the end of the tail of the end leader of the tape provided by the tape manufacturer so that it would auto rewind and start again unattended. OR, sometimes a tape machine would “EAT” a tape and you had to disassemble the VTR to get at the tape wrap. Yes, one of our many jobs as a tape op. It’s funny, maintainance people would laugh at us if we called upon them to remove a stuck tape. I obviously could go on and love to talk about those early days but I won’t bore you any further. LOL! Feel free to reach out via RUclips comments. I’d love to chat more with you if you’d like, but I am hesitant to posting my email address here on RUclips. Keep creating!
@@michaelcolletti5086 Whoa, I’d never heard of the CMX system. Amazing. Did the model you got to use have the light pen? That’s interesting in its own right. I have a Vectrex (vector screen-based game console) with a light pen, and although it’s a simple technology, it still feels like magic using the pen. I’ve made audio tape loops (cassette and 1/4”), but never video tape loops. Someday I’d like to if I can think of an interesting use for it. But yeah, I know how touchy VTRs are with tensions, so it doesn’t surprise me to hear about mechanical mishaps. I’ve mostly just played around with consumer types of tape. VHS, all the 8mm varieties for camcorders, stuff like that. The digital tape formats don’t interest me that much because they don’t have enough of their own distinct look. I’ve always had a fascination with U-matic just because of the weird diagonal stripy artifacts. But, I already have more vintage gear than I should have, and it rarely gets touched, so I probably won’t be seeking out one of those. Although, I did go to a vintage A/V gear sale recently in hopes of bringing home one of those open reel 1/2” black and white VTRs. I have a Sony AVC-3400 camera that could use a deck of the era to go with it. I was able to test them there, but alas, none of them worked. Not boring at all. I love this kind of tech history.
@@japhyriddle Ha! Ha! The technology had not been invented when I started for a light pen. So no, we did not have light pens for our CMX systems. So glad that someone like yourself is so into the vintage video stuff. Yes, early on Sony was at the forefront of introducing inexpensive videotape recording equipment of all kinds of formats to the general public. As a matter of fact, the 3/4” cassette format that Sony developed was supposed to be so low cost to buy and own that it was designed to be a consumer’s home video cassette recorder. Some even came with tuners to perform recordings while you were away. Then, of course, Betamax was introduced and a short time later VHS. VHS basically won out for the consumer because it was capable of recording for 2 hrs. The length of a typical TV show. Betamax 1 could record for 1 hour. Then came the different recording speeds by each format and it became ridiculous. Sony and JVC began slowing the tape speed down so that you could cram more content onto a cassette. This came at a price though. The slower they ran the tape across the video heads, the poorer the picture quality. In videotape recording head to tape speed meant everything. 2” Quad as a standard speed was 15 ips, or inches per second. This could be halved to 7.5 ips to double recording capacity, also with a noticeable degradation in quality. In the early days of Quadruplex recording, standardization between VTRs was a nagging issue, soooooo, if we were sending a 2” Quad recording to another facility or TV station so that they could play / broadcast it, we would have to ship the entire Quad head assembly, which was easily pulled out of the VTR, and ship it with the tape to ensure compatibility. The Quad assembly “module” would be placed in a special foam padded shipping case with the foam insert custom made to conform to the shape of the head assembly. There was also an air release valve on the outside of the case that enabled us to suck all of the air out of the case so that external particles of dust and condensation would not build up during transit. Working in TV back then as a VTR operator was a lot of fun because of all this tech stuff. This reply is already too long, so next time I’ll describe the reasons why the video heads had to spin at such a high speed to record and play back a TV image. You might already know. Also Sony’s genius engineering that allowed them to keep the cassette design going forward as improvements in the recording quality and formats evolved.
@@michaelcolletti5086 Oh yes, I know about tape speed trade-offs. I have a few tape decks that I record music with occasionally. My 8-track 1/2” machine runs at 15IPS, just like quad, but I have a 1/4” machine that can run as slow as 3.75. I used SLP for this video because SP wasn’t degrading fast enough, ha ha. I know the VHS SP specs for chroma and luma resolutions, but I’ve never looked into the numbers for SLP. I guess it would be about a third of the resolutions? Whoa, that’s crazy that you had to ship the heads. I’ve seen a video about all the calibration that goes on every time a new tape was spooled onto the machine. And how there’s air pressure involved in the system. It’s so nuts. I love it. I know about helical scan if that’s what you’re referring to about the high speed spinning heads. Interestingly, I have a PXL-2000 camera-that goofy Fisher Price toy camera that records video onto audio cassette tapes-and the resolution is so low that they could afford to record its custom video signal onto the tape linearly without helical scanning. Are there any programs you edited that I might be familiar with?
@@japhyriddle You could make a pinned comment detailing the frequently asked questions or place it in the video description! From reading the popular comments, your replies does answer a lot of them, but there's rrrreally some digging deep involved to find the more obscure questions. Either way, this is a brilliant video and I'm happy someone's used this piece (alongside a really cool demonstration as well), so cheers! :)
@@thatoneplayer5407 At this point, I should probably pin the answer to the music question. I originally didn't do so just to increase interactions. But it's probably time now. Glad you like the video. Vaughan Williams is my favorite right now. The Phantasy Quintet pieces are my absolute favorites of his I've heard so far. But they didn't have the right feeling for this video.
I think it’s partially because he doesn’t break eye contact (slight Kubrick stare?), and because his eyes start to have a glowing effect, making the footage more uncanny.
It looks like what I see during a sleep paralysis episode and I’m desperately trying to close my eyes and pull the covers over my head, but I can’t move.
Very impressively edited! I love that magnetic lo-fi sound, it sounds a lot like microcassette past the 3rd or 4th generation, when it starts to sound saturated.
I got a little lost in nostalgia as you were going along there, but when you turned the dial to go forward and back in time, i got a little lurching feeling for a second... Very impressive recreation!
Most people simulate the VHS degradation effect digitally afaik, but yes. It can also be done this way, which is technically more "authentic" I guess. Of course, recording and re-recording things 16 times back and forth, like in this example, is a very time-consuming process, since it has to be done in real-time.
This is the real deal. But if you don't have such tool you can replicate this using adobe premiere "noise" and "warp stabilizer" effects but it'll bogged the playback real fast! so better finish the other part before creating a scene with this effects. But if analog horror from video game you're referring to I'm afraid, that I'm still newbie in making games i only scratch the surface with unity
@@erikkonstas haha sure! skipped your heartbeat when reading that engine huh? I stopped trying to develop something with it since 2019 as my current environment weren't suitable and my recently replaced laptop hdd that had every resources i need to develop a game which unfortunately isn't compatible with my newer machine that only take m.2 memory 😅
They also had a copy protection method where they'd deliberately screw with the sync pulse signals of movie tapes so that it would go to heck with the first attempt to duplicate unless you ran it through a time base corrector.
I tried this once with a licensed tape, a blank tape, and two vcrs. It went from crystal clear to instant diarrhea, Black and white, jumpy picture, the works.
Japhy Riddle Yeah, that could be. I also just tried to use a different licensed tape and then a home recorder blank to another blank, which worked both times with minimal quality loss. It might just be a gamble, or different types of tape(not sure if that makes sense, but the first one that turned out awful was an official BBC release of Doctor Who, and the second licensed one was from a very small company who could’ve used home-movie grade tape. But I’m not too sure).
I think they were talking about the past, nobody would copy a VHS movie nowadays. Serious people use to buy a digital video stabilizer, which allowed any movie to be perfectly copied. I use to do this for friends I had, it worked fine for Blu-Ray movies copied to a blank DVD. Lol
I would love a complete, technical tutorial on this. The effect at the end is fantastic. I wonder if there is a way to reproduce this entirely digitally.
I think it would be possible to reproduce this effect digitally. I've never tried it out, but there's a tape simulator called "ntscQT" which looks rather realistic. I don't know if there's any way to automatically do some type of recursion with it, but you could always just do it manually 10-20 times.
No. It's not VHS until "Generation 2". I've never been clear on the terminology. Is the source supposed to be called Generation 0 or 1? It reminds me of the floor counting system. In the UK and much of Europe, the ground floor is floor 0. In the US, it's floor 1. Which way do "generations" work?
@@japhyriddle I would simply call it "Original Source" and then start counting from one. Here in my country we use this system for lifts too, calling the ground floor, Ground Floor or something like Low Level. Then start counting from one.
5 лет назад+37
You haven't learned a single thing about the dangers of finger snapping, did you?
I learned that it's less dangerous than pretending to turn invisible potentiometers... although, with a potentiometer, one can turn it the other direction and reverse the damage. There's no way to "reverse snap".
This is what I mean when musicians play to the room they also play to the recording equipment and that’s why analog vs digital is so important and I’m tryna learn more about the differences I wanna put together a really great analog recording studio someday
I do love this. I admit, I just wished you also had demonstrated the change in sound with every step too - particularly with your voice - because I was really interested in the audio side of this!
I thought the same thing, was really excited to hear how the audio/dialogue would continue to degrade with each pass, that first switch while he’s still talking had that perfect tape compression and warmth, love it!
As a kid I had some classic horror movies (Evil Dead 1 + 2, Nightmare on Elmstreet, Hellraiser 1 + 2) on VHS as second or third generation copies, also not all VCRs were Stereo compatible and by todays standards made the audio really bad. But I must say this added some kind of atmosphere especially to horror movies.
Before the internet or DVD's this is what porn used to look like in the '80's & early '90's. You had to squint or use your imagination to guess what the blurred images might be if you wanted to get your rocks off. Things were far more wholesome back in the day.
Dude this is so educational! I’m working on a VFX project that is VHS found footage and this showed me exactly what I needed to really make the distortion feel real
Wow. This was cool already, but the knob effect made it something truy special. Also, someone should DEFINITELY use this idea for a short film, as A Geves suggested.
what's the music playing in the background called? is there a name for that type of music? I'm not talking about the instrument, but the "open world video game exploration music" vibes it gives. It's such pleasant music but it somehow makes this video all the more scary with that audio distortion.
Tudor music/English folk-song influences classical music. Vaughan Williams Piano Quintet in C minor | Novacek/Yoo/Oudin/Kim/Cahill | Festival Mozaic. The exact name of the song is "Andante".
My sisters and I had a VHS copy of "The Emperor's New Groove" that we ran so much that we wore out the tape (the movie would finish and we'd rewind it and start it all over again, for months on end). Would love to see you replicate that effect as well.
@@ShatitoLlegando oh shoot, sorry i couldn't be perfect at speaking a language that isn't even my native one. either way, i believe people who speak English natively tend to make similar mistakes to me.
*Information explained in the video: As time goes by; When the cassette and device become old; Its quality becomes old, it deteriorates, it rubs off and the substance undergoes changes (such as rusting) etc. That's why I'm telling you, if there are safe tapes like this, they need to be shared on RUclips with clear sound and HD video. Otherwise, it will be forgotten and gone from history.*
Great question. It's a live version of a Vaughan Williams piece: Piano Quintet in C Minor performed by Novacek, Yoo, Oudin, Kim, Cahill. You can find it on RUclips.
Reminds me of 'the disintegration loops' by William Basinski. It was basically an artsy audio recording where the reel-to-reel loop would be recorded as it disintegrated over time. Over a looong time...
Some of my VHS tapes actually got this bad because I’d copy my favorite shows from one source to the next to remove commercials, then again to make compilations. I had no concept of signal degradation or loss at that age!
There was one time in my childhood that I made a copy of a tape and the result appeared to look better than the original. I didn't understand how that could be possible. It turned out that because VCRs often employ a sharpening filter, the copy looked sharper to my naive eyes, even though detail had been lost.
"I had no concept of signal degradation or | ||
|| |_."
@@maximusstorm1215Good try but I don't think the aligment is quite there depending on the platform of viewing.
@@maximusstorm1215 is this....
@@kayEnt3rtainm3ntGuess the joke was | |I || l_t on some platforms...
The invisible super visual degradation twist knob was a great peak. Very good!
Ha ha. Thanks. While I was doing that, I thought, "I wonder if I should have been pushing invisible buttons instead of snapping my fingers.".
Japhy Riddle You should’ve done that at the 16th Generation.
@@japhyriddle 26 5 13.
Me Her He Here Here's Here is
@@NikoCubeRoot what
where can i buy one? I lost it and i can't find it anymore
The gen z version of this is people cropping a tiktok meme over and over until the quality is so bad that the video is indistinguishable
dude youre spitting facts
yes but this isnt because a technological degredation, rather user error and stupidity.
@@RGBReact I'm pretty confident there's some sort of thing that decreases the quality of videos when downloading them, so that 10 times then you see what this guy is talking about
@@RGBReact from tech degradation to user degradation
and will call it a humor
The artifact in 3rd and 4th generation copies took me back to my childhood. Comforting almost.
Do you know Jesus Christ can set you free from sins and save you from hell today
Jesus Christ is the only hope in this world no other gods will lead you to heaven
There is no security or hope with out Jesus Christ in this world come and repent of all sins today
Today is the day of salvation come to the loving savior Today repent and do not go to hell
Come to Jesus Christ today
Jesus Christ is only way to heaven
Repent and follow him today seek his heart Jesus Christ can fill the emptiness he can fill the void
Heaven and hell is real cone to the loving savior today
Today is the day of salvation tomorrow might be to late come to the loving savior today
Romans 6.23
For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
John 3:16-21
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
Mark 1.15
15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.
2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Hebrews 11:6
6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Jesus
bro, 3rd and 4th generation copies were all PORN... nice childhood.
@@Ponnybit 🤣🤣🤣
I love how it goes from a demonstration video to analog horror real quick
analog horror = anything on a VHS
@@manboy4720 exactly
His deep staring into my soul at the 5th generation certainly helped
To be honest, although I like analog horror, I HATE how it has fucked up the internet's mind to the point everyone associates anything that looks like old Polaroid picture quality or VHS generation loss (or VHS "filter") to horror even when things in question aren't scary per se
@@agentepolaris4914 I totally get your point, but I think it's oddly scary nonetheless, I called it analog horror because I couldn't think of any other way to describe it. But still old vhs videos are at least a bit disturbing to me, doesn't matter what the video is about.
This is really scaring me, because when I was 13 I started having a reoccurring dream of an event but it was VERY badly distorted. It looked exactly like what happens at 0:56. The event was people looking frantic and running, while some stood in their midst just staring at the sky. Some were pointing, some were crying. There was no sound at all, it was so silent that the silence itself was a presence. I still remember the silence of it, but there was sound at the end. At the end I would hear someone shouting 'SHUT IT OFF! HE'S WAKING UP! WE HAVE TO SHUT IT DOWN!!!". The dream would happen only once twice a month, and it went on for about 9 months.
Bro thats actually creepy asf
Wow. That's sounds very intense. It could probably be fleshed out and turned into a scary sci-fi film. Thank you for sharing.
Get dawg a dream doctor 😭😭😭
@@japhyriddleMy writer ass could never NOT write that idea down
SHUT IT OFF! SHUT IT OFF!! THEY HIT THE FUCKING PENTAGON!!!!
as someone who uses vhs regularly this is the most accurate depiction of different levels of vhs picture quality I've ever seen online
Why are you using vhs regularly?
@Mobilis17 because my family never stopped using them and i enjoy old technology so I've actively added more to the already existing family collection, 4/5ths of what i watch is old enough to be on vhs anyway and they're insanely cheap these days, 10 cents each at my local salvation army, for someone who conveniently already owned a vcr 10 cents for a movie is insane
@@dguy0386it is good, but only if you own a box tv. VHS looks horrible on a flat screen (because it has to convert from analog to digital I think)
@@dguy0386I wish they were that cheap where i lived
@@dguy0386 based, you should be my bf
This is exactly how South Park spread across the land when that original "The Spirit of Christmas" came out. I remember taking my 7th generation VHS copy I made from my best friend’s 6th generation VHS copy, and making at least a dozen 9th generation copies of it to pass out to my friends, who in turn made several 10th generation copies to pass around to their friends. It was the first viral video I can remember.
LOL
analogue horror fans: "OMG THIS IS SO FIRE"
@MaxConsumesDeadHamstersmay you send the link of your analog horror? i would like to see
@MaxConsumesDeadHamsters and i do too but alive
I don't understand analog horror but everyone I know that does is like, at least 10 years younger than me. I'm slowly becoming convinced it's scary to them because they don't understand analog electronics?
@MaxConsumesDeadHamsters that's fair! Everything I've watched in that category always has an air of unease for sure, it's just that there's never any payoff. It's like watching a movie thinking it's a horror but really it's just a thriller at its core.
True
Everywhere at the End of VHS.
This technique would actually make for an amazing narrative short film, I really wish it was longer demonstration, but love it all the same, thank you for sharing.
Back in 2008 (or sometime around then), I made a short film which used this effect almost narratively. But that film wasn't very good. You're right, I should make some actually good short with this effect.
@@japhyriddle Cool! I'd still love to see it, and anything else, should you get the inspiration and idea for this technique! It'd really be beautiful. It is present here though and that is worthy of praise!
It seems to me, the signal would converge to a state such that the VHS degradation ends up producing the same signal. This could be called an “eigenstate” of the complete VHS recording+playback cycle.
@@japhyriddleIs it online anywhere? I suggest you archive stuff like that
Isn't that just any analogue horror media
It is a good thing they figured out how to have lossless digital audio recording, for example, the Rolling Stones early master tapes are worn out completely and the recordings you hear now are a digitized recording from the last playing. This means that if digital sound recording never happened then there could only be a finite possible number of copies and plays of any one song.
Agreed. The archivist in me is very grateful.
As long as there's someone there to digitally copy the digital copy before it degrades too much.
@@lutello3012Yes, but the key difference is that you can now copy as many times as you want without any quality loss whatsoever. Checksums and ECCs ensure that the file can even withstand some degradation of the physical medium, and that you'll know for sure whether it's been changed at all from the original.
Vinyl fanatics are going “la-la-la, can’t hear you” ...
@@mezzb Vinyl is a dead-end technology that remains stuck in the 1970s. At least the Compact Cassette continued to be improved right into the 1990s with new magnetic formulations etc. If any retro analog format is worthy of a revival, cassettes are it.
I have to give you credit for taking the rare approach of actually progressing the storyline within your one take. Most RUclipsrs would just show the same exact 5 seconds of footage on repeat as it degrades (assuming other RUclipsrs tried doing this experiment). This approach here is much more engaging.
it's like making a clone of a clone of a clone of you each copy is lesser quality over the previous copy and you are the best quality you there is sadly
A lot of people use glitchy VHS to be unnerving, but using it as a sense of imminent time and decay is an idea worth exploring
I was totally surprised at how many people thought this video was scary. I guess if people's first exposure to VHS artifacts is a horrific one, then that's what they associate with the format. Since I was born in '84, I grew up with the format, and have nothing to fear about its artifacts. This was meant to just be a silly tech demonstration video.
@@japhyriddle And it definitely serves the purpose well, the video is fantastic. It's that fusion of fear and education that intrigued me, taking the VHS artifacts, and giving them a deeper meaning to analog horror than just corruption or an otherwise unnerving presence
@@japhyriddle I was born in 1984 too and the only thing "scary" about a glitchy VHS is the possibility of a broken tape, or worse, a broken VCR. And the anxiety of having to explain to my parents that the VCR might be broken. 😆
That's actually exactly what is done with the intro sequience of Better Call Saul through the seasons.
@@japhyriddle а вы знаете про брат 1997 (где данила багров)?
I think those among us who bought a lot of bootleg VHS videos in the 80s and 90s can recognise generations 2-4 very well.
AMNOGN!??!?!??! SUS!??!?!?!
AMOGUS
These comments, including OP, are a good demonstration on who's born in the 20th century or the 21st.
Legend has it the FBI is still after him.
@@kobwmoosemillennials can't enjoy amogus?
Fascinating video ... and brings back memories!
Some time between 40 and 50 years ago as a young child, I had a fascination with audio tape recorders. The ability just to record anything that happened around me, and play it back, listened to what just happened AGAIN - sufficiently blew my young noggin to no end. I had a little Lloyd's brand cassette recorder, as my first.
A few months into this wonderful new science, I found my dad's big reel-to-reel deck, and ran a crazy experiment - the first recording, was of me just clapping my hands for about ten seconds. On the second recording on the other deck, I did the exact same - just not the exact same 'clapping speed' as the first recording, AND - with the first recording being played back very close to the microphone. Back to the first deck for #3, which now had 2 of me clapping already ... you see where this is going.
I remember making it up to a barely tolerable 30 recordings, that sounded like a class room FULL of clapping kids, but the imperfections and high overtones of the early, low quality microphones, soon in those re-recordings would produce an extremely annoying tone just desperate to "feed back"... and I was eventually stuck with that.
Funny thing about this was, no one at all believed me, when I told them that there was only one person clapping, and that was me. I hadn't thought about that memory for at least 20 years -- until I saw this video. Thank you!
I love this story. Thank you for adding it to the comments.
Я тоже слушаю аудиокассеты и вчера я нашел в заброшенном гараже одну кассету там был рэп про здоровый образ жизни
When I was younger I did a similar multi-recording trick with a normal tape recorder. I found that if you stick a small wad of paper in the cassette shell where the eraser head normally comes up, you can block the erase head and record yourself on top of whatever was there and layer yourself that way.
That sounds really cool. I never thought of iterative recording as a kid. I hated the loss of quality when doing it, so I never would have thought to make an experiment out of it. If only I could go back. The 70s were a great time to be a kid.
Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The end is near, all the prophecies are being fulfilled, moon turning to blood, sun darkening, wars, everyone against Israel, deserts becoming rivers, antichrist rising, but Jesus already arose, He’s here for us.
I like that the video is only 1 minute and straight to the point, instead of a long boring video dragging on for 30 minutes
I think I could probably spend that long talking about the technical details of something like this. But I decided just to make something fun and silly.
My parents had a big laser printer for their home run magazine business. Once when I was messing with it I discovered this concept with the coper function of the printer. This would've been mid 90's. So when I heard about cloning degradation in science fiction shows years if not decades later I knew what they meant.
Awesome. Before learning the proper terminology for doing it with video, my friends and I used to call this technique "video Xeroxing".
Th the
45 years ago, I was a copy machine repairman. The machines used liquid toner and coated paper...no digital anything. To test repaired machines' optics, focus, etc, we'd make copies of copies of copies of copies of copies, etc. until quality degraded to an unacceptable level, to verify the quality of the repair.@@japhyriddle I think I'll check both my laser and ink jet printers to test the image degradation on modern machines.
this is so oddly eerie, there’s always something about degrading orchestral music in vhs that feels so tragic
That’s probably why the artist The Caretaker used that kind of music to represent Alzheimer’s. Spooky, sad stuff
That's ALWAYS gotten me! Distorted/old sound always gets on my nerves.
May I ask, does anyone know what music that is?
Reminds me a bit of a video "what I saw before the darkness" in which someone had used an AI image generator (if I remember correctly, it's styleGAN) and a seed to generate a face. Then, one by one, its neurons were turned off while keeping the same seed, making it seem as if the brain that imagines the face is slowly dying and the face slowly rots or burns away until the moment on which all input neurons were disabled and all what's left is just black pixels
The way I like To think of VHS, is like an abandoned town. A place that once was thriving with life, now a place left behind, stuck In time, empty and In decay. VHS films are similiar To a decaying town In a sense, that this outdated form of media has been replaced by superior tech, which Means no More improvement on this now-outdated tech, leaving what's left of this media To decay and give newer generations an ever degrading glimpse In To the past.
This is art; it made me feel emotions. It's a good metaphor or simile, or whatever for memory. The further from the source, or the moment in real life, the more distorted it is.
Aw. Thank you. I'm glad it moved you.
That's our post post modern history to a T. It's literally what the first Matrix movie was going on about 20 something years ago. A copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. And eventually people don't realise what the source is.
Post-Awareness Stage 6 is without description.
@@artemisvega8940 Oh so like the way my mum used to always have leftovers
It's basically an adaptation/continuation of Alvin Lucier's piece "I am sitting in a room" -->
ruclips.net/video/peahfxDx8m8/видео.html
0:58 POV: The One Ring has been put on your finger
This is essentially how we age. Our DNA keeps copying and copying, making us less "perfect" as the years go on.
true we are subject to the second law of thermodynamics which is entropy. macro-evolution never happened and micro evolution is just damage-control (adaptation) as we devolve.
So does this mean older people have more degraded children? 😂
@@VengefulPolititronPlease tell me this comment is a joke.
@@VengefulPolititron: |
@@raven-athis is actually true. the probability of a child being born with a genetic disorder is tied to the age of the mother, eg down syndrome
When I was a kid, my parents would often get pirated VHS tapes both from friends and from actual outlets that sold pirated VHS tapes, as well as rental places. You could often tell how many times they were copied by just how horrible the quality was. When I got a little older and sought out to buy actual licensed VHS copies of things I liked, I was kind of shocked to see how good the quality actually was on the original tapes. 😅
Tony was literally into everything, wasn't he?
How many copies were each clap in this video? Was each copy very forgiving as in each clap would be ten copies. Two claps in this video meant twenty copies?
How many copies were each clap in this video? Was each copy very forgiving as in each clap would be ten copies. Two claps in this video meant twenty copies?
На 0:49 джеффри похож на сыендука (дмитрий сыендук заменит из-за мема ДЕТЕЙ)
I'm actually shocked how much is lost already on 1st copy....quite interesting, thanks for the video!
Indeed. VHS is a really terrible (specs-wise) format. Thank you.
@@japhyriddle Or the perfect anti-piracy format 🤔
@@0L1 Certainly not. I had two VCRs growing up. Poor Blockbuster. We copied all the good movies we rented.
Do you have a copy of Shazam laying around?
@@quentinkaasa47 Back then, I was "too cool" for Shazam. Now, I can get down with it.
I miss the days where perfect duplication wasn't available on tap for next to nothing. Appreciate the walk down memory lane.
your computer when your dog bites the wires 1:01
@NathanIndonesiaComedy ):
ignore the other guy your joke is great
I like this joke 👍
LMAO, amazing joke
Hilarious joke!
This is how Terminator 1 looked like when I first saw it. With single voice dubbing.
I was one of the few people to buy a Super-VHS VCR, and it was terrific. It was every bit as good as Laserdisc and DVD.
That's so cool. I've never had the opportunity to play with S-VHS. Although I do have a Beta SP deck, which beats SVHS in chroma resolution, but not luma resolution if I recall.
@@japhyriddleI've been looking for an SVHS deck to try the ET recording abilities most JVC players have.
@@dotmatrixmoe That would be awesome. I hope you find one.
The best part was recording broadcast TV with S-VHS since it was far more noticeable improved quality than regular VHS. I remember doing this with daytime soaps that played during the day so we'd record them to watch at night.
"It was every bit as good as Laserdisc and DVD"
No it wasn't.
SVHS still had horrible chroma resolution.
It was good, but nowhere near as good as even ED Beta or Laserdisc.
0:16 aesthetic af
True
You kids use the word aesthetic all wrong. It’s a thing not a description. You basically said look af
@@CarlosRojas-hr6ms idk what the real definition of aesthetic is man sorry 😭 but you get what I mean
Not just you, I see it all over the place. It means how something looks, like it’s style
@@CarlosRojas-hr6ms Did you call us kids?
0:53 This looks like a 1970's spearmint gum or mouthwash commercial.
Ha ha ha. I guess my life's complete now.
well you aren't wrong
You unintentionally described our aging process. Periodically our cells try to copy themselves.
Wow, this video made me think about how my childhood memories are slowly fading out. Every now and then I realize that the moments that I know I remembered are not there anymore. That's sad.
Holy crap that hits me.
Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The end is near, all the prophecies are being fulfilled, moon turning to blood, sun darkening, wars, everyone against Israel, deserts becoming rivers, antichrist rising, but Jesus already arose, He’s here for us.
Write them because the ones you now remember you will forget.
0:11 vhs used to look like this before they all became low quality? old people lie about the quality then 😢
Vhs technology eventually got better
*Alternative Title:*
VHS Generation Loss Demonstration
Indeed.
Japhy Riddle
*INDEED INDEED! XD*
from old infomercial to analog horror (why tf are ppl arguing if analog horror is scary who cares bro)
How in the world is this even remotely horror
@@flariz4824 That's not what they were saying. They're talking about how the VHS effect looks and sounds, and the very distorted part is similar to what a lot of analog horror series use.
@@Conorator"horror"
@@KaygeeFromNanotrasen Are you doing one of those snarky elitist things where you try to imply that analog horror isn't "real horror?"
@@Conorator dude its just dogshit
0:16 found status
0:31 found status
0:37 partially found status
0:43 partially found status
0:48 lost status
0:53 lost status
1:06 extinct status
i hate the fact that i understand where this is refering to
rd
@@shadymorsi4347 and I don't understand
@@Optimus97 its a reference to lost media wiki which uses those classifiers depending on the foundability of media
@@shadymorsi4347could someone link me to a video of extinct media that looks like that?
This is how public domain movies end up looking on various DVDs.
That twist knob effect is really cool, alot of the old doctor who dvds contain the ghosting effect and the shifted colours
Hello Keiran.
@@antonioromanazzi6341 hello? Do I know you?
This is really freaking impressive, to make this clear, this effect is pretty much done with only VHS, no software effects?
To answer simply, yes. The effects (artifacts) are caused by analog hardware and tape only. However, in order to ensure a proper sync signal all the way through the many back-and-forth transfers, the footage gets digitized every generation. Any artifacts the digitization process adds to the recursion are very subtle, and are most-likely dwarfed by the ones the VCR introduces.
Also things like blocky mpeg artifacts will get smeared out by the tape anyway
to be honest most of the visible degredation in earlier copies is caused by highliting interlacing lines over the edges which is not a problem of vhs tapes or players, but of the capture, digitalization and encoding process.
Also the random occasional horizontal artifacts are caused by damaged tape (crinkles).
This could easily represent how a memory becomes more and more diffuse over time, until it disappears completely
And this is why I love vhs. It's real. It's alive. It's basically video archeology. You can tell who did what to a videotape just by looking at what parts are more warped than others. From rewinds to record-overs. It's all there. #circulatethetapes 📼🍻💙
Its my favorite format too :3
You might love JPEG as much then, because the encoding technology is literally the same (YUV+color information reduction). Just compress image at 60 enough times to get the desired effect, done.
@@corwin.macleod Ugh, but those 8x8 pixel blocks. So offensive to me.
The
@@corwin.macleod JPEG uses DCT though which produces artifacts which aren't really nice on the eyes, you'd get a much more accurate effect by simulating NTSC in software
Fun fact, this is what happens to our cells as we age. The replacement is never as good as the original, x2, x3, x4, etc.
Yep, it is exactly what happens when we age! EXACTLY!
let's restore! ☝️
I did something similar with a photocopier on my last day at a very toxic workplace that almost drove me insane. I copied all the forms that they used. Then I replaced all their master forms with the 20th generation copy. Then I walked out.
Ha ha. Good on ya. I used to call this VHS back-and-forth process, "Video Xeroxing" before I learned any other terminology.
inb4 you get sued
It's not an official document until it has extreme photocopier burn anyway.
@@ibm30rpglet people enjoy things i dont care that its """property damage""" i wanna see sh*t burn.
Woah, calm down Satan!
I sorta feel like memories work that way, losing detail and becoming less clear. By the way that last part with the imaginary knob turning thing, it’s really cool.
Yeah, it does feel like that. Thank you.
I'm an enthusiast for everything that is vintage, especially from the 80s. I have this habit of watching old commercials compilations here on yt and I definitely recognized the look of almost all of them. I wasn't aware of how copying a tape over and over could damage the image, very interesting work, congrats!
I actually ended up here from watching this girls playlist, after I saw her in the comments for an old commercial that was recommended to me because I had been watching old TNN (Spike TV) commercial compilations. 😄
@@quentinkaasa47 me? my playlists? WOW
@@deborahmartins1547No, it was somebody else I came across after being recommended the Bob Wehadababyitsaboy commercial.
There was something human about analog technologies. Imperfect, susceptible to aging...will always hold a special place in my heart.
I know what you mean. There's a certain life to them that is often missing from the exactness of digital formats.
it gets progressively scarier and scarier, but your winks and smiles keep me happy and feeling safe!
0:56 it was very cool!
This is the same reason we age and die. Cells that copy degrade over time.
That is deep? 🤠
Oh shit VHS cancer
Except for our gametes, somehow.
@@k-force8325 Researchers recently found a way to create something resembling an early-stage human embryo, starting entirely from regular body cells.
Our bodies are basically analog systems made of flesh.
extremely nicely done editing, must have taken a lot of work
Thank you. Not too much work. I had a way to automate a variable that would select the different generations. Basically a slider bar to choose how messed up it looked.
@@japhyriddle did you use something like the signal plugin?
Every time I watch this, I'm disappointed it doesn't devolve into an analog horror short.
I love the look of old, slightly degraded VHS. It's really nice for horror (as we've seen before) and it just looks nice.
same here. I don't like the crisp look.
yep reminds you, you're looking at a screen. Most are now living through screens, no longer being able to tell the difference @@haveanicedave1551
Since I'm into sound, my favourite generation loss side effect is stereo audio going to mono audo.
HiFi Stereo on VHS wouldn't degrade that much - it would degrade and the noise floor would increase, but it wouldn't be that bad. Mono audio on VHS is really crappy even at generation 1.
This experiment would be more interesting if the first version was recorded on a decent VHS camcorder and then dubbed only VCR to VCR. The intermediate digital step isn't a perfect copy due to capture limitations. Also PAL would be better than NTSC in this regard. If only I still had my old equipment...
10th generation was the 80s standard for bootleg porn as a kid.
It's like watching the pay-TV channels at late night. Audio tells you what's going on, but the picture is - meh.
Ahh yes..the scrambled late night channels. Brings back memories.😄
@@chunkymunkey9182 Waiting for that flash of beaver or boobs.
Many a p0rn0 was watched in this fashion...kids today will never understand the struggle!
As a kid?
This reminds me of an old video of a guy who uploaded a video to RUclips then ripped it then re-uploaded again and again until it was distorted just like this. Nice video!
Thank you. Yes, it's a similar thing going on with a RUclips compression recursive loop, but with very different artifacts that build up.
From what I've seen digital video definitely seems to be more resilient towards this than analog; the digital demos often go for hundreds or even thousands of generations and the picture is still mostly there and the audio doesn't lose much quality, whereas analog demos typically give up after 20 or so generations.
The thing is that digital video is actually capable of exact source reproduction, but then this short video would require like 700MB at 1080p resolution. So for most consumer applications the codec tries to find the areas people are less likely to notice and smear them out to save data, and since it's often the same spots being degraded each time those spots eventually turn to garbage while other portions which get ignored remain surprisingly close to pristine quality. Whereas with VHS exact reproduction is simply impossible, so the losses occur across the board and compound much faster.
The flipside of this is sometimes the important information is in the seemingly unimportant areas, so you end up with night scenes where nobody can see what the director intended because the codec simply pooped over everything in the shot
A friend of mine used to record various sex scenes from different films onto one tape. it became known as the toffee tape (Tape Of Fucking For EveryonE). He kept it discretely hidden in amongst his parents VHS collection, marked as a film they would never be interested in watching. One day he came home and noticed all the tapes were missing. His dad had donated their entire collection to a local charity shop. My friends first words "Oh shit, not the fucking toffee tape....". I still wonder who ended up with it and what their response was on first viewing.
this is hilarious
Nooo, not the toffee tape!
You remember it very well. Anyone would say your friend lived in your house and looked a lot like you. 😜
0:17 now this guy looks like Pablo Escobar in his early days
Lol yes 😂
nobodys talking about how good 1st gen looks like
Yep! That’s what happens. I’ve been a videotape editor for nearly 50 years. When I started in the business, composite video was the only connectivity option. I started by working on 2” Quadruplex video tape recorders. At that time, this was the standard broadcast format. Over the years, the evolution of videotape and recorders led to the DigiBeta format. SDI connectivity ensured virtual lossless generation transfer. This all changed when video became file based and non linear editing became the standard for editing. I’ve seen an amazing evolution over the years. This demonstration was very cool!
That's so cool that you got to work with 2" quad! What a monster. Did you ever do any physical tape splicing?
I have a Beta SP deck right now. I occasionally use it for lo-fi music video jobs when I need something more robust than VHS. Especially if I need to do chromakeying. Old video gear is so fun to work with.
@@japhyriddle Hey! I missed 2” Quad tape splicing by only a few years. We DID have a 2” tape, video or audio, splicing block on display in the studio just to show how it was done in the past. Anyway, by the time I started as a tape operator at age 18, CMX editing systems were in use. Maybe google CMX Editing for a comprehensive explanation. The basic configuration was a computer made by the CMX corporation, PCs and Macs were far in the future, The CMX computer controlled at bare minimum, 4 Quad VTRs. One designated as the recorder and three designated as playback machines. CMX also controlled our Grass Valley switchers to trigger effects at appropriate times. In short, the holy grail of tape to tape “cloning” was the Sony Digi Beta Format. Digi standing for “Digital.” 2 vtrs were connected via an SDI cable and when you made a copy, it basically was an exact copy, a clone, if you will of your original tape. Virtually lossless quality going down generations. Yes, I’ve used Beta SP decks in production and post production. In short, I’ve worked with just about every videotape format that was introduced as the next “new and best” format. I could go on for hours. The only actual videotape splicing I ever had to do was when I had to create repeater reels for trade shows etc. where you would lay your edited piece on a reel of 3/4” videotape multiple times until it almost filled the tape and then had to go to the last piece, cut the tape there, pull out the excess unused videotape and splice the end of your piece to the end of the tail of the end leader of the tape provided by the tape manufacturer so that it would auto rewind and start again unattended. OR, sometimes a tape machine would “EAT” a tape and you had to disassemble the VTR to get at the tape wrap. Yes, one of our many jobs as a tape op. It’s funny, maintainance people would laugh at us if we called upon them to remove a stuck tape. I obviously could go on and love to talk about those early days but I won’t bore you any further. LOL! Feel free to reach out via RUclips comments. I’d love to chat more with you if you’d like, but I am hesitant to posting my email address here on RUclips. Keep creating!
@@michaelcolletti5086 Whoa, I’d never heard of the CMX system. Amazing. Did the model you got to use have the light pen? That’s interesting in its own right. I have a Vectrex (vector screen-based game console) with a light pen, and although it’s a simple technology, it still feels like magic using the pen.
I’ve made audio tape loops (cassette and 1/4”), but never video tape loops. Someday I’d like to if I can think of an interesting use for it. But yeah, I know how touchy VTRs are with tensions, so it doesn’t surprise me to hear about mechanical mishaps.
I’ve mostly just played around with consumer types of tape. VHS, all the 8mm varieties for camcorders, stuff like that. The digital tape formats don’t interest me that much because they don’t have enough of their own distinct look. I’ve always had a fascination with U-matic just because of the weird diagonal stripy artifacts. But, I already have more vintage gear than I should have, and it rarely gets touched, so I probably won’t be seeking out one of those. Although, I did go to a vintage A/V gear sale recently in hopes of bringing home one of those open reel 1/2” black and white VTRs. I have a Sony AVC-3400 camera that could use a deck of the era to go with it. I was able to test them there, but alas, none of them worked.
Not boring at all. I love this kind of tech history.
@@japhyriddle Ha! Ha! The technology had not been invented when I started for a light pen. So no, we did not have light pens for our CMX systems.
So glad that someone like yourself is so into the vintage video stuff. Yes, early on Sony was at the forefront of introducing inexpensive videotape recording equipment of all kinds of formats to the general public. As a matter of fact, the 3/4” cassette format that Sony developed was supposed to be so low cost to buy and own that it was designed to be a consumer’s home video cassette recorder. Some even came with tuners to perform recordings while you were away. Then, of course, Betamax was introduced and a short time later VHS. VHS basically won out for the consumer because it was capable of recording for 2 hrs. The length of a typical TV show. Betamax 1 could record for 1 hour. Then came the different recording speeds by each format and it became ridiculous. Sony and JVC began slowing the tape speed down so that you could cram more content onto a cassette. This came at a price though. The slower they ran the tape across the video heads, the poorer the picture quality. In videotape recording head to tape speed meant everything. 2” Quad as a standard speed was 15 ips, or inches per second. This could be halved to 7.5 ips to double recording capacity, also with a noticeable degradation in quality. In the early days of Quadruplex recording, standardization between VTRs was a nagging issue, soooooo, if we were sending a 2” Quad recording to another facility or TV station so that they could play / broadcast it, we would have to ship the entire Quad head assembly, which was easily pulled out of the VTR, and ship it with the tape to ensure compatibility. The Quad assembly “module” would be placed in a special foam padded shipping case with the foam insert custom made to conform to the shape of the head assembly. There was also an air release valve on the outside of the case that enabled us to suck all of the air out of the case so that external particles of dust and condensation would not build up during transit. Working in TV back then as a VTR operator was a lot of fun because of all this tech stuff. This reply is already too long, so next time I’ll describe the reasons why the video heads had to spin at such a high speed to record and play back a TV image. You might already know. Also Sony’s genius engineering that allowed them to keep the cassette design going forward as improvements in the recording quality and formats evolved.
@@michaelcolletti5086 Oh yes, I know about tape speed trade-offs. I have a few tape decks that I record music with occasionally. My 8-track 1/2” machine runs at 15IPS, just like quad, but I have a 1/4” machine that can run as slow as 3.75. I used SLP for this video because SP wasn’t degrading fast enough, ha ha. I know the VHS SP specs for chroma and luma resolutions, but I’ve never looked into the numbers for SLP. I guess it would be about a third of the resolutions?
Whoa, that’s crazy that you had to ship the heads. I’ve seen a video about all the calibration that goes on every time a new tape was spooled onto the machine. And how there’s air pressure involved in the system. It’s so nuts. I love it.
I know about helical scan if that’s what you’re referring to about the high speed spinning heads. Interestingly, I have a PXL-2000 camera-that goofy Fisher Price toy camera that records video onto audio cassette tapes-and the resolution is so low that they could afford to record its custom video signal onto the tape linearly without helical scanning.
Are there any programs you edited that I might be familiar with?
nobody:
serial killer interrogations in the 80s:
For those asking: the music in this video is the second movement of Vaughan Williams' Piano Quintet in C Minor!
Thanks for mentioning this : ) I used to reply this to everyone who asked, but it's been tough keeping up with all the comments these days.
@@japhyriddle You could make a pinned comment detailing the frequently asked questions or place it in the video description! From reading the popular comments, your replies does answer a lot of them, but there's rrrreally some digging deep involved to find the more obscure questions. Either way, this is a brilliant video and I'm happy someone's used this piece (alongside a really cool demonstration as well), so cheers! :)
@@thatoneplayer5407 At this point, I should probably pin the answer to the music question. I originally didn't do so just to increase interactions. But it's probably time now.
Glad you like the video. Vaughan Williams is my favorite right now. The Phantasy Quintet pieces are my absolute favorites of his I've heard so far. But they didn't have the right feeling for this video.
0:39 The eyes start to look more creepy in this part
I think it’s partially because he doesn’t break eye contact (slight Kubrick stare?), and because his eyes start to have a glowing effect, making the footage more uncanny.
6 years later this is new to me! Thank you Japhy!
This was so nicely demonstrated, the effect is oddly beautiful
1:05 Kinda looks like a nightmare
It looks like what I see during a sleep paralysis episode and I’m desperately trying to close my eyes and pull the covers over my head, but I can’t move.
Very impressively edited! I love that magnetic lo-fi sound, it sounds a lot like microcassette past the 3rd or 4th generation, when it starts to sound saturated.
I got a little lost in nostalgia as you were going along there, but when you turned the dial to go forward and back in time, i got a little lurching feeling for a second... Very impressive recreation!
I feel like this should be playing in one of those small theaters inside MoMA exhibits. Well done.
Hee hee. Thank you. If it were in that environment, the monologue would have to be more culturally relevant. But I think you're right.
"Real Footage" video quality be like:
So this is how analog horror is made?
Most people simulate the VHS degradation effect digitally afaik, but yes. It can also be done this way, which is technically more "authentic" I guess. Of course, recording and re-recording things 16 times back and forth, like in this example, is a very time-consuming process, since it has to be done in real-time.
This is the real deal. But if you don't have such tool you can replicate this using adobe premiere "noise" and "warp stabilizer" effects but it'll bogged the playback real fast! so better finish the other part before creating a scene with this effects.
But if analog horror from video game you're referring to I'm afraid, that I'm still newbie in making games i only scratch the surface with unity
@@MaseraSteveUm, change your game engine while you can...
@@erikkonstas haha sure! skipped your heartbeat when reading that engine huh? I stopped trying to develop something with it since 2019 as my current environment weren't suitable and my recently replaced laptop hdd that had every resources i need to develop a game which unfortunately isn't compatible with my newer machine that only take m.2 memory 😅
They also had a copy protection method where they'd deliberately screw with the sync pulse signals of movie tapes so that it would go to heck with the first attempt to duplicate unless you ran it through a time base corrector.
As someone who collects vhs tapes, this is awesome. Thank you for this!
Collects them for what they look like shit?
Some are rare and collector items. like many horror movies
I tried this once with a licensed tape, a blank tape, and two vcrs. It went from crystal clear to instant diarrhea, Black and white, jumpy picture, the works.
Yeah, I think this one lasted through more generations than yours did because it had a digital intermediate between each copy.
Japhy Riddle Yeah, that could be. I also just tried to use a different licensed tape and then a home recorder blank to another blank, which worked both times with minimal quality loss. It might just be a gamble, or different types of tape(not sure if that makes sense, but the first one that turned out awful was an official BBC release of Doctor Who, and the second licensed one was from a very small company who could’ve used home-movie grade tape. But I’m not too sure).
yeah, macrovision and shit makes it unwatchable, you should use 2 black vhs tapes next time.
I think they were talking about the past, nobody would copy a VHS movie nowadays. Serious people use to buy a digital video stabilizer, which allowed any movie to be perfectly copied. I use to do this for friends I had, it worked fine for Blu-Ray movies copied to a blank DVD. Lol
@@horrortimeproductions5504 yeah, I get it
I would love a complete, technical tutorial on this. The effect at the end is fantastic. I wonder if there is a way to reproduce this entirely digitally.
I think it would be possible to reproduce this effect digitally. I've never tried it out, but there's a tape simulator called "ntscQT" which looks rather realistic. I don't know if there's any way to automatically do some type of recursion with it, but you could always just do it manually 10-20 times.
Oh, so that's why in Better Call Saul, the Opening slowly Degrades over time until the last season the Opening barely played on a VHS Player.
The effect at 0:55 was amazing :D
0:07 WAIT IS THIS ALREADY ON VHS?!!!!
No. It's not VHS until "Generation 2". I've never been clear on the terminology. Is the source supposed to be called Generation 0 or 1? It reminds me of the floor counting system. In the UK and much of Europe, the ground floor is floor 0. In the US, it's floor 1. Which way do "generations" work?
@@japhyriddle I would simply call it "Original Source" and then start counting from one.
Here in my country we use this system for lifts too, calling the ground floor, Ground Floor or something like Low Level. Then start counting from one.
You haven't learned a single thing about the dangers of finger snapping, did you?
I learned that it's less dangerous than pretending to turn invisible potentiometers... although, with a potentiometer, one can turn it the other direction and reverse the damage. There's no way to "reverse snap".
@@japhyriddle tell that to the avengers
@@japhyriddle oh wow, this video got recommended to me again after 4 years, and just noticed you answered. Hi! :D Cool video by the way :)
This is what I mean when musicians play to the room they also play to the recording equipment and that’s why analog vs digital is so important and I’m tryna learn more about the differences I wanna put together a really great analog recording studio someday
I do love this. I admit, I just wished you also had demonstrated the change in sound with every step too - particularly with your voice - because I was really interested in the audio side of this!
I thought the same thing, was really excited to hear how the audio/dialogue would continue to degrade with each pass, that first switch while he’s still talking had that perfect tape compression and warmth, love it!
As a kid I had some classic horror movies (Evil Dead 1 + 2, Nightmare on Elmstreet, Hellraiser 1 + 2) on VHS as second or third generation copies, also not all VCRs were Stereo compatible and by todays standards made the audio really bad. But I must say this added some kind of atmosphere especially to horror movies.
Кошмар на улице Вязов много и в россии (в конце 80-х эти VHS привозили в ссср)
Хорошие у вас вкусы
Before the internet or DVD's this is what porn used to look like in the '80's & early '90's. You had to squint or use your imagination to guess what the blurred images might be if you wanted to get your rocks off. Things were far more wholesome back in the day.
2018: *talking about childhood and how uncanny this is*
2024: AnAlOg HoRrOr
Kids today: "What creepy pasta is this?"
Do kids now even care about creepypastas anymore?
Dude this is so educational! I’m working on a VFX project that is VHS found footage and this showed me exactly what I needed to really make the distortion feel real
Oh, that's great to hear. I'm glad this helped. When your project is done, send me a link : )
Wow. This was cool already, but the knob effect made it something truy special.
Also, someone should DEFINITELY use this idea for a short film, as A Geves suggested.
Did you actually copy it out as many times as you showed at the end, physically? Or did you use a digital effect that recreates the VHS artefacts
No digital effects. It's all VHS. There's a total of 16 generations if I remember correctly.
THAT IS SO TRIPPY! Well edited, nicely done.
Very cool demonstration. I've been thinking of trying this myself, since I have an old deck and a bag of tapes lying around.
what's the music playing in the background called? is there a name for that type of music? I'm not talking about the instrument, but the "open world video game exploration music" vibes it gives. It's such pleasant music but it somehow makes this video all the more scary with that audio distortion.
I don't identify it as something else than instrumental music. A nostalgic instrumental piece? 😅
Tudor music/English folk-song influences classical music. Vaughan Williams Piano Quintet in C minor | Novacek/Yoo/Oudin/Kim/Cahill | Festival Mozaic. The exact name of the song is "Andante".
My sisters and I had a VHS copy of "The Emperor's New Groove" that we ran so much that we wore out the tape (the movie would finish and we'd rewind it and start it all over again, for months on end). Would love to see you replicate that effect as well.
wait this isnt ranbo-
this is a visual representation of how people with Alzheimer lose there memories.
EATEOT, except on VHS.
"there" 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
@@ShatitoLlegando oh shoot, sorry i couldn't be perfect at speaking a language that isn't even my native one. either way, i believe people who speak English natively tend to make similar mistakes to me.
very cool. i wish there were more tech demos of this sort, and i love people taking the time to create them
*Information explained in the video: As time goes by; When the cassette and device become old; Its quality becomes old, it deteriorates, it rubs off and the substance undergoes changes (such as rusting) etc. That's why I'm telling you, if there are safe tapes like this, they need to be shared on RUclips with clear sound and HD video. Otherwise, it will be forgotten and gone from history.*
homie began the analog horror trend by accident
0:59 Now I'm curious: how much generational loss is required for an effect like that, and could I make it at home?
I think that's the 16th copy. I made this at my home, so I don't see why not.
I'm more curious about the music - where is it from?
Great question. It's a live version of a Vaughan Williams piece: Piano Quintet in C Minor performed by Novacek, Yoo, Oudin, Kim, Cahill. You can find it on RUclips.
*1:06** sounds like "Время" broadcasted by C-SPAN from '94 to '95*
Да как время
Reminds me of 'the disintegration loops' by William Basinski.
It was basically an artsy audio recording where the reel-to-reel loop would be recorded as it disintegrated over time. Over a looong time...
It's a classic. Thanks for the comparison.