Preserving the images and sound on videotapes for as long as possible has actually already reached the end of the lifespan of the media. It has been discovered that videotapes degrade much quicker than originally thought. Ten years is the limit for many tapes. There are many issues that cause videotapes to degrade.

Videotape is able to store the images and sound by having the electronic signals encoded on the tape as it moves through a machine. The part of the tape that stores the signals is tiny iron particles that are magnetic. On many types of videotape the iron particles are deposited onto the videotape using a binder to hold them in place. It has been discovered that the binder degrades and becomes sticky over time. This will clog the VCR play/record heads with the sticky binder and ruin the information on the tape since the magnetic particles are physically rearranged or sloughed off the tape.

Any videotape that is over ten years old is on borrowed time, but every videotape should still be stored in a way to maximize its ability to preserve the images and sound recorded on it. The first thing to do is to keep the tapes in an environment that is as temperature and humidity stable as possible. A room that is regularly used by people is probably acceptable. If the room is a storage room that gets hotter or colder than the rest of the house it probably is a bad choice. An attic or garage used for storing videotapes is just accelerating the degradation process. Tapes stored under such conditions may already need specialized equipment and processes to recover any useful information recorded on them.

There are some super high-tech methods of recovering the recorded information on the videotapes such as a baking process that makes the binder not sticky anymore, but the prudent thing would be to not let a videotape get to that point before transferring it to an archival digital format. The next best thing is to store the tapes properly to squeeze out as much time that one can from the lifespan of the videotape.

The information is stored magnetically on the videotapes. It is a given that a strong magnetic field will randomize the recorded information thus erasing the tape. However, weak magnetic fields with long exposure times must also be considered. Televisions, speakers, and electric motors that are running all emit magnetic fields. A simple fix is to not store videotapes under television sets or next to speakers, and not to run electric motors close to them.

Keep videotapes in the box that the manufacturer or vendor supplied. Don't store tapes outside of their boxes. Store videotapes upright and lined up on a shelf or in a container as if they were books on a library shelf. Keep them away from exposure to high levels of dust, or any chemicals or liquids. And never store a videotape inside the machine that plays it. Take it out, put it back in its box and back on the shelf or in the storage container.

Its probably understood by everyone that its not a good idea to ever touch the actual tape, but it also needs to be understood that the tape can be damaged by not fully rewinding the tape to one spool before storage and that every playing of the tape is actually causing it to degrade. A VCR uses rollers and guides as a tape is played to pull it along through the machine. Then the tape is pulled across a tape head that is rotating at high speed. Each playing of the tape is actually causing physical degradation of the videotape media due to moving parts coming in contact with the tape itself.

The machines are made to rewind the tape to the correct tension. If there are any tapes going into storage fast forward them to the end and then rewind them back to the beginning. Be careful with tapes that have not been touched in years. They may be brittle. They may break. And if the binder of the videotape is already sticky then just playing them once will destroy the recorded information.

Ideally the best option is to send the tapes to Got Memories for immediate transfer of the recordings to an archival digital format that can be preserved forever. No matter what the brand of videotape is, no matter how well they have been kept, the information recorded on those tapes will not last forever. Little by little every single day the magnetically encoded information on the tapes is being lost.