Getting Hi8 tape to work

Hi everyone,

While cleaning out the house I recently (3 days ago) came across some old Hi8 video tapes. I remembered that about 8 years ago I had the loan of a video camera and had taken some footage of my mam who has since died. The tapes are the only footage that exists of her.

I managed to get a friend who has a Hi8 video camera to loan it to me and when I play the tapes all I get is a "noise", black and white fuzz, and sometimes the blue screen with noise. At the end of some of the tapes the blue screen plays with no noise which I'm taking to mean that there is nothing on these.

Is there any way to restore or recover what is on these tapes? There seems to be no sign of discolouration on the tape but I reckon that 8 years in a cold bedroom closet hasn't done them any good. All advice gratefully received.

Many thanks

Try and and find another playback unit. Sometimes you can get a mismatch between the physical tracking of one machine and another. Also make sure the tapes and the playback unit have been at room temperature for a while. Fast-forwarding and rewinding might help too as the tape might be a bit slack.

Are you sure everything is Hi8? There were quite a few non-Hi8 cameras in the past and the tapes look identical. Also, there was a variant called 'Digital8' and it used the same tapes too but could only play back on a Digital8 unit.

I'll try to get another Hi8 unit - am positive on everything else - I think it may well be age has caused the tapes to deteriorate. Many thanks for your advice Technologist.