VHS copied to VHS copied to VHS copied to VHS copied to VHS... (VHS Generation Loss Demonstration)

I'd done this once before ten years ago, but I'd never properly showcased it.

What you're witnessing is a video being copied to a VHS tape, that tape being re-digitized, and then copied onto the tape again... and again and again and again... a total of sixteen times.

I termed the original digital video source "generation 1", but it should possibly be called "generation 0". I've never been clear on which way is proper. The first time you see VHS is generation 2.

Results vary from VCR to VCR. This one behaved nicely.

I made sure to start out with a very colorful scene in order to show how the colors degraded.

The music is Vaughan Williams - “Piano Quintet in C Minor” performed by Novacek, Yoo, Oudin, Kim, and Cahill.

[harperlilian]

The gen z version of this is people cropping a tiktok meme over and over until the quality is so bad that the video is indistinguishable

[MrMegaManFan]

Some of my VHS tapes actually got this bad because I’d copy my favorite shows from one source to the next to remove commercials, then again to make compilations. I had no concept of signal degradation or loss at that age!

[tacoyael]

I love how it goes from a demonstration video to analog horror real quick

[moxie]

A lot of people use glitchy VHS to be unnerving, but using it as a sense of imminent time and decay is an idea worth exploring

[Kris_A]

The invisible super visual degradation twist knob was a great peak. Very good!

[nithsk]

analogue horror fans: "OMG THIS IS SO FIRE"

[BenjaminHari]

I'm actually shocked how much is lost already on 1st copy....quite interesting, thanks for the video!

[Faith_Soprano]

When I was a kid, my parents would often get pirated VHS tapes both from friends and from actual outlets that sold pirated VHS tapes, as well as rental places. You could often tell how many times they were copied by just how horrible the quality was. When I got a little older and sought out to buy actual licensed VHS copies of things I liked, I was kind of shocked to see how good the quality actually was on the original tapes. 😅

[ageves]

Everywhere at the End of VHS.

This technique would actually make for an amazing narrative short film, I really wish it was longer demonstration, but love it all the same, thank you for sharing.

[brentfisher]

It is a good thing they figured out how to have lossless digital audio recording, for example, the Rolling Stones early master tapes are worn out completely and the recordings you hear now are a digitized recording from the last playing. This means that if digital sound recording never happened then there could only be a finite possible number of copies and plays of any one song.

[PianoManPaul]

Fascinating video ... and brings back memories!

Some time between 40 and 50 years ago as a young child, I had a fascination with audio tape recorders. The ability just to record anything that happened around me, and play it back, listened to what just happened AGAIN - sufficiently blew my young noggin to no end. I had a little Lloyd's brand cassette recorder, as my first.

A few months into this wonderful new science, I found my dad's big reel-to-reel deck, and ran a crazy experiment - the first recording, was of me just clapping my hands for about ten seconds. On the second recording on the other deck, I did the exact same - just not the exact same 'clapping speed' as the first recording, AND - with the first recording being played back very close to the microphone. Back to the first deck for #3, which now had 2 of me clapping already ... you see where this is going.

I remember making it up to a barely tolerable 30 recordings, that sounded like a class room FULL of clapping kids, but the imperfections and high overtones of the early, low quality microphones, soon in those re-recordings would produce an extremely annoying tone just desperate to "feed back"... and I was eventually stuck with that.

Funny thing about this was, no one at all believed me, when I told them that there was only one person clapping, and that was me. I hadn't thought about that memory for at least 20 years -- until I saw this video. Thank you!

[sanixxs]

it gets progressively scarier and scarier, but your winks and smiles keep me happy and feeling safe!

[hotfightinghistory]

This is really scaring me, because when I was 13 I started having a reoccurring dream of an event but it was VERY badly distorted. It looked exactly like what happens at 0:56. The event was people looking frantic and running, while some stood in their midst just staring at the sky. Some were pointing, some were crying. There was no sound at all, it was so silent that the silence itself was a presence. I still remember the silence of it, but there was sound at the end. At the end I would hear someone shouting 'SHUT IT OFF! HE'S WAKING UP! WE HAVE TO SHUT IT DOWN!!!". The dream would happen only once twice a month, and it went on for about 9 months.

[dguy]

as someone who uses vhs regularly this is the most accurate depiction of different levels of vhs picture quality I've ever seen online

[andrut]

Wow, this video made me think about how my childhood memories are slowly fading out. Every now and then I realize that the moments that I know I remembered are not there anymore. That's sad.

[RedeemingLight]

This is exactly how South Park spread across the land when that original "The Spirit of Christmas" came out. I remember taking my 7th generation VHS copy I made from my best friend’s 6th generation VHS copy, and making at least a dozen 9th generation copies of it to pass out to my friends, who in turn made several 10th generation copies to pass around to their friends. It was the first viral video I can remember.

[Daves]

I think those among us who bought a lot of bootleg VHS videos in the 80s and 90s can recognise generations 2-4 very well.

[inamorato]

this is so oddly eerie, there’s always something about degrading orchestral music in vhs that feels so tragic

[jonpatchmodular]

Very impressively edited! I love that magnetic lo-fi sound, it sounds a lot like microcassette past the 3rd or 4th generation, when it starts to sound saturated.

[PetrMessner]

This is how Terminator 1 looked like when I first saw it. With single voice dubbing.