We were very excited recently when Chris Bradfield from Soundscommercial uncovered a previously unseen batch of EIAJ half inch reel to reel video tapes. In the process of looking for 1976 footage for their event, Spirit of 76, we uncovered many other gems. One of these goals was the famous hat-trick scored by Kevin Mabbutt against Manchester United at Old Trafford in 1978. Mabbutt is one of only two players in Football League history even to have done this and this footage was never recorded anywhere else!
Unfortunately this large batch of valuable recordings had been stored in damp, unheated conditions and had suffered. The tape had deteriorated in several ways.
- Mould growth was evident on some tapes
- The oldest tapes from the early 1970s were shedding oxide severely and had little lubrication left in the binder.
- Binder hydrolysis, often called sticky shed was evident on other tapes.
Each issue needed a different process to treat the tape. The common assumption that ‘tape baking‘ will restore all unplayable tape is not true. It is just one solution to one of these issues and can cause more problems if used incorrectly. Deteriorated video tape is much less forgiving than audio tape when attempting transfer and must always be handled and processed with extreme care. Crinkled, curled, edge damaged tapes are next to impossible to restore back to their original condition and it’s common that more damage can occur when owners are desperate to transfer footage.
We were able to restore all the tapes to a playable condition and make uncompressed quicktime files of these.
Below is a clip from a later recording. We are not able, unfortunately, to show the Kevin Mabbutt clip yet.
[…] the process of digitising tape after tape, we hit the jackpot. We’d discovered a very famous 1978 hat-trick by Kevin Mabbutt against Man United at Old […]
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