I digitized this tape a bit ago and I felt like sharing this VHS anomaly. This was taken from the UK VHS tape Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends: Thomas, Percy and the Coal and Other Stories, released by Screen Legends in 1987 (no idea when this particular tape was manufactured as I can’t find any evidence of a manufacture date). While the actual VHS tape is in really good condition given its age, the master tape used during duplication had clearly seen better days as the picture often suffers from jumping and picture disturbances during playback (these are not issues with the VHS tape as they don't look like VHS artefacts and the head switching noise doesn't move off its video line when they happen, plus there is no sound pops or cracks when they happen). Right at the end of the tape, for some reason rather than letting the logo animation fade out to black, the VT operator decided to do a freeze frame on the Screen Legends logo by hitting pause on the dubbing VTR. However either due to the VTR or the master VT it didn't produce a perfect freeze frame, leaving artefacts on the screen, you can see the VT operator trying to jog shuttle to get a cleaner image, failing and eventually giving up leaving the frame on screen for around 3 minutes (you can hear the jog shuttle by turning the volume to max on the start of the freeze frame and when the interference is moving up and down the screen before resting near the top). The logo disappears eventually leaving a black screen which runs for around 3 minutes 20 seconds before the VHS tape reaches its end and rewinds. From what I can recall the timer did go up on the VCR I was digitising this tape with so it's not an issue with the VHS tape or my VCR.
Be the first to comment