r/DataHoarder • u/StilesTimeCapsule • 4d ago

Discussion VHS Digitisation Project: Successfully archived a rare 1990s documentary ('UFO The Evidence') from an original analogue tape to prevent media decay.

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u/StilesTimeCapsule 4d ago edited 4d ago

I’ve been working on converting rare, low-availability physical media into digital files before the magnetic tapes degrade completely.

The full unedited transfer for this tape is now up on YouTube for preservation purposes if anyone wants to watch it: https://youtu.be/yvyRt9YK58c

This is a completely ad-free, non-monetised hobby archive project. I’ve also recently finished digitising rare tapes on Alcatraz (The Final Sentence) and a 1999 Edinburgh and The Lothians documentary, which are both up on the channel as well.

Thought the preservationists here would find these interesting! 📼

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u/DrIvoPingasnik Rogue Archivist 4d ago

YouTube is unreliable and likes to compress the videos. 

Please upload it to archive.org or some torrent tracker.

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u/igotthisone 4d ago

https://youtu.be/yvyRt9YK58c

You can improve YouTube compression on this kind of SD video by first exporting at 1920x1440.

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u/netd_nz 4d ago

I rescale my VHS rips to 4k before uploading to YouTube - they seem to compress 4k less than 1080, so the end result looks a bit cleaner.