Six hour, EP play VHS tapes can have their quality dramatically improved during the Transfer to Digital Process.

Back in the 90's some specialized VHS and SVHS equipment was made that could make six hour VHS and SVHS recordings look remarkably good. The key was the video head would ignore the HI-Fi audio and the larger sized video head was able to get a better signal to noise ratio on the picture only.

The bad news is the linear audio on a six hour tape is poor.  However, the specialized 6 hour VHS, SVHS machines usually had a dolby option. The dolby option definitely reduced the hiss one would hear, but additional sound equalization was needed to subtly bring back the mid's and highs without reintroducing the hiss.

One could literally spend 10 to 30 hours transferring a six hour speed recorded tape if the project required going back  and doing a second pass on another machine that could playback the six hour tape's hi-fi audio track while doing a poor job on the video image.

The result would be, one transfer would have a relatively spectacular looking six hour image with a relatively average sound track, while the second transfer could have spectacular sounding hi audio and really bad image quality.

One wonders how many videos out there that were recorded in the six hour VHS or SVHS mode and then transferred to digital sacrificed either the audio or the picture quality. It would not surprise me if 99 times out of 100 time the Six hour recorded tape was unknowingly transferred with no knowledge that the picture quality could be dramatically improved and that it would take a second pass in instances where hi-fi audio had been recorded as well.

Contact Alessandro Machi at vhs at AlessandroMachi.com if you want to book a session in his amazing Analog to Digital Studio. Alessandro's Studio Credits include over 25 IMDB credits and a Los Angeles Emmy. He is also currently ranked top 25 out of 20,000 Lifetime Tongal Ideationists. Mr. Machi also won the prestigious Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Internship Scholarship Award in the Commercials Category many moons ago.