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VCR

Video heads need looking after, those you rent might give you lots of problems. Look after your tapes, keep them stored in their boxes to keep out the dust. When the microscopic gap in the video heads of an analog machine is clogged with any kind of matter, the result is head clog. At best, a snowy picture will result (photo on left), at worst full-blown snowstorm will take over, and the picture will roll and break up.

Playing a head cleaning tape for about five seconds may solve the problem. If it doesn't, you may have to get a engineer to clean the heads.

A more common fault is the tracking control this affects the VCR's ability to precisely align the heads with the narrow video tracks recorded on the tape. As with skew, the tracking control is only used to correct problems during playback.

On most videotape formats tracking errors show up in the form of a horizontal band of video noise (shown left). In severe cases there will be a total break up of the picture.

If automatic tracking fails or is not present and the video level falls below the optimum level indicated on the meter, the tracking control should be adjusted for maximum signal strength. These only indicate the maximum video level and tell you nothing about the content. The video could conceivably consist of nothing but a white screen.