
The Creepy Beauty of VCR Errors - prismatic
https://killscreen.com/articles/vcr-errors/
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azernik
As far as I understand from the description of the technique, these aren't
actually VCR/VHS errors - they're RCA line errors:

"To discover his glitch art, Johnson plugs short, repeating videos into an
Xbox 360 through its USB port, and then feeds that into a VCR. The output is
projected on to an old CRT TV he bought from a thrift store. He then
manipulates a frayed RCA cable that runs from the Xbox to the VCR while it’s
recording in order to interrupt the signal. “The colors tear, images start to
warp, and still images start to come alive with organic motion,” Johnson says.
“I’ve recently looked into some circuit bending boxes that can be an
intermediate between the signal and the recording, but I like the lack of
control I have with just jamming some wires together.”"

He's using a VCR to capture the resulting distorted video, but another digital
device with an RCA input line would work just as well.

~~~
knughit
Before digital cable, cable signals were scrambled in a similar way to prevent
pirate receivers.

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jcrawfordor
VCRs behaved a little odd surrounding pausing. You probably remember back in
the day - a paused VCR would show the frame it was paused on, but usually
poorly, with some noise, a bit out of alignment.

This is related to the mechanical design of VHS tapes and the player. VCRs use
helical scanning. What this means is that each frame of video is recorded on
the VHS tape in a linear track that runs diagonally across the tape. Inside
the VHS player, you may remember seeing a drum in the back that seems at an
off angle. This is the helical read drum: it spins at a very high speed as the
tape is pulled around it, and the combination of the slanted head drum
spinning and the tape moving along it at a lower speed results in the heads
mounted to the drum tracing these diagonal lines on the tape.

The TV draws to the screen continuously, 29.97 times per second, and draws
whatever is coming on the analog video input at that moment. So for the image
to remain when you have paused the tape, the VCR must continuously play the
same frame back to the television. This requires keeping the drum moving and
alternating the tape drive (the capstan motor) back and forth very rapidly to
try to keep the same helical track aligned with the head over and over. This
never quite works right, leaving a noisy signal that often has a bit of a
shake as the tracking goes in and out each frame. Additionally, the capstan
rapidly switching directions can damage the tape, which is why most VCRs will
switch to Stop after being paused for a few minutes.

Laserdiscs had this problem much worse, as there was simply no practical way
to get the disc back to the beginning of a frame quickly enough to rescan it.
Higher-end laserdisc players could show a freeze-frame, but they did it with
an electronic framebuffer that was digitally replayed to the TV. I wonder if
there may have been higher-end VCRs with this same technology, but I haven't
seen one.

~~~
WalterBright
Consumer VCRs are very complex and are modern mechanical marvels. It's amazing
they work at all, let alone so reliably.

~~~
minikomi
You're certainly not the only one who admires them for what they are.

[https://youtu.be/-z4iw8Ppo1o](https://youtu.be/-z4iw8Ppo1o)

~~~
WalterBright
The comment in there by Alen Lecher is pure gold.

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JacobAldridge
Back in 2003, me and some mates set the Guinness World Record for non-stop
movie watching (we clocked in at 'only' 63 hours and 27 minutes, but that was
enough for the record back then). The rules set by the Guinness Book were long
and quite specific, but didn't have a provision for 'technology failure'.

DVDs obviously existed back then, but most stores were still a mix of them and
VHS (plus the occasionaly Laserdisc Pocket, futilely seeking a return on
investment). We opted to go through all the movies on VHS - basically, a DVD
fail was often 'all or nothing' while a VHS tape might scroll or stutter (and
indeed, 58 hours in the machine overheated and gave us no visuals for a few
scary minutes) but they would usually keep rolling and come good.

Now of course it's all digital, and my wonderful VHS collection taunts me
every time I step into my office as I convert them one-by-one.

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WalterBright
I have had enough of decaying VHS tapes and dirty VHS heads to not
particularly appreciate that form of art :-)

~~~
ihsw
What is the likelihood that millions of people across the globe have worthless
VHS tapes due to decay, and worthless VHS players too?

One can only wonder -- will we notice before it's too late?

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l33tbro
Aren't we over this visual effect yet? I renember a few years ago every
hipster with a 5D was using this effect to give their work the affect of
authenticity. It ma be interesting technically, but the overuse has made it
far from beautiful or compelling.

~~~
erikpukinskis
I don't think overuse is the limiter on beauty or compellingness. I think an
artistic medium only has two requirements:

1) an output space that is vastly larger than could be exhaustively explored
on human timescales

2) the proportion of the output space that can be quickly accessed by an
artist can be increased through practice.

Many glitches score poorly on one or both of these... Often additional
practice with the glitch does not increase the artist's ability to address
larger portions of the output space. A completely random glitch would be the
worst case scenario there.

But many glitches do fulfill both requirements, and there's no reason those
couldn't be used to creat great art.

~~~
pshc
That's a neat analysis of what makes an artistic medium interesting! Did you
come up with that breakdown?

~~~
erikpukinskis
Yeah... I spent some time pondering why people respect the violin more than
synthesizers.

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loser777
I'm interested in what makes these glitches "creepy"\--is it possible to
develop some criteria that all of these glitches satisfy? I'm reminded of the
photograph distortions (e.g.
[https://thatwasabitmental.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/ringu1...](https://thatwasabitmental.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/ringu1.jpg))
shown in the 1998 horror movie Ringu (which coincidentally has much of its
plot dedicated to a VHS tape). How does such a simple blurring effect manage
to do so much?

~~~
rangibaby
Like it says in the article, the uncanny valley is a large part of it. Your
brain gets spooked by things that look almost but not quite right. Like a cat
barking, or a face with no features.

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fernly
Garage sales. You need a VCR, a CRT tv, some tapes. Everything well-used and
crufty. Getting scarce but they do show up. Maybe look for "estate sale"
signs, you're more likely to find these things when relatives are clearing out
an elderly person's house.

~~~
joezydeco
Any Goodwill or thrift store will have 2 or 3 sitting around for $5.

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shurcooL
I'm fascinated by this because it's one of those things I don't fully
understand. If I had to recreate it, I wouldn't know where to begin.

