Untaping a video?

[Punked Out Comp]

Is it possible to untape a video cassete?
Last night I taped a tv show but I thought a different video was in the vcr.
What I taped over was really important to me, so If there is any way to get it back, PLEASE post.

[HAL9000]

Nope.. history dude.

[Panama Red]

Reminds me of the "Everybody Loves Raymond" episode where he tapes a football game over their wedding video! Hate to tell ya, but I don't think there's any way to get the original recording back. For future reference, break out the "record protect tab" next time on stuff you want to keep to prevent this from happening.

[Punked Out Comp]

Hal- Are you absolutely %100 sure there are no companies or professionals who can do this?

Panama- that the first thing I thought of actually.

[Markman385]

i'm pretty sure once you tape over something it's gone but what you can do to stop it from happening again is break off the tab on the cassete. On the back side there should be a plastic tab to break off and it won't let the tape be rerecorded if there is something you want to keep on it. Then if you do ever want to tape over it you can just put a piece of tap over where the tab was.

[HAL9000]

Yup... video tape wouldn't be any different than a hard drive really... on a hard drive, once you overwrite a sector with new data, it's gone.. same with the video tape... you have physically changed the magnetic properties of the tape.

[doctorgonzo]

A data recovery company MIGHT be able to do it, since it is essentially the same thing as recovering data from a hard drive - it is all magnetic data after all - but VCRs do not record data in a linear fashion like an audio cassette. It uses a flying head to record diagonal strips, so I would think that there would be a lot less bleeding around the edges, leaving no "old" data not recorded over.

[RJ]

Nope. The little elements on the tape are already aligned in a different way. You can't reverse that. And even if it was possible somehow, you couldn't afford it anyways.

RJ

[Punked Out Comp]

Can some one link me to a video cassette data recovery website?

[RJ]

There is no such thing as a "video cassette data recovery" company. A video cassette does not contain any data, just analog signals. And if you are referring to doctorgonzo's "data recovery company", they are the companies like Ontrack that rescue data off hard drives.

RJ

[HAL9000]

Just Google it http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=...recovery&meta=

I highly doubt you would get it back as data recovery sites would only be able to obtain data from things that were not readable in the drive, not overwritten. If they can get data back, it won't be all of it.. it will be bits and pieces at best. Last proffessional data recovery job I did was in excess of $2000.... is it worth it?

[Punked Out Comp]

IDK but this was kind of ireplacable and priceless

[Stryker]

Hey man, sorry to hear about what happened. That really stinks!!

Although it doesn't help you much right now, I would recommend picking up a capture card for your PC and transferring all your tapes to CD or DVD. I did it with all my important stuff like wedding video, F1 race I went to, family movies, vacation stuff, etc... I have 2 copies of each so if anything ever happens to one of them, I still have another. Plus, the media will last a lot longer than the cassettes. I know the last thing you want to hear right now is how it could have been avoided, but if you have other valuable things on tape, I'd recommend the caputre card. Here's the one I use (PCI) and I've been quite happy with it.

Was the video footage taped with a 8MM video cam? If so, you may still have the 8MM tape lying around somewhere. Might be worth a look and you can transfer it from there if you're lucky enough to find it.

Stryker

[mbossman2]

had the wife check with one of the video engineers where she works (TV station) and he said that outside of spy novels, there is really nothing that can be done to salvage the "old" recording....sorry.

[Punked Out Comp]

The video was in the recorder so there was no transfering. Thanks anyway guys, I appreciate it.

I've figured out the purpouse of my life, Im g-ds source of humore, he basically hates me.

[SonicVanguard]

Originally Posted by mbossman2 had the wife check with one of the video engineers where she works (TV station) and he said that outside of spy novels, there is really nothing that can be done to salvage the "old" recording....sorry.

I would agree - I've been in the A/V business long enough (too long actually) and have answered this question dozens of times, each time the answer is NO.

Dave.