Take Five: Tips for Tape Care

If you are like most camcorder users, you point your camcorder at all sorts of interesting, exciting and important things. Your tape archive may include historical records of once-in-a-lifetime events like weddings, graduations and family reunions. You may have a tape of that dream vacation to the islands or your European trip to investigate your family's history. You have those recordings of your kids as babies and that irreplaceable interview of your grandfather. Clearly, the moments and events that you've captured on tape are of great value to you.
These five tips will help you take good care of your tape collection so you can enjoy those memories for years to come. How well are your tapes stored? Take five and find out.

1 Store your tapes upright

That big cardboard box of tapes is a bad idea. Over extended periods of time gravity can cause videotape to sag on the reel if stored lying flat. In some cases this can cause distorted warped-looking images on playback. In other instances, tapes may not play at all or they may damage your VCR or camcorder. To increase the life span of your tapes, regardless of the format, store them upright, as you would books on a shelf. <…