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Film & Video Tape to DVD, USB or Hard Drive – VHS to DVD – 8mm, Video 8, Digital 8 to DVD USB or Hard Drive
Over the years there have been many video tape formats used in domestic situations and these legacy formats are now getting older and less reliable, the machines that play them back are becoming harder to find and the repair of many of them is becoming almost impossible because of the lack of spare parts and qualified technicians. As new technology allows us to transfer these tapes to more reliable formats we find ourselves doing more and more of this work at ProCopy.
The are many tape based formats that are housed in plastic cases (cartridge style) of one size or another such as VHS and S-VHS, Beta, Betacam, Betacam SP and U-Matic are some of the common full sized tapes formats that we transfer. Camera tape formats include Video 8, 8mm, Digital 8, VHS C, and Mini DV tape formats as now transferred on a regular basis. Only style formats such as 8mm, Super 8, Pathe, or 16mm films are also catered for at Procopy. More information about film reel transfers can be found here:
Quite often video tape housings can be damaged causing erratic playback and sometimes will have damaged the video tape, in these cases the housings may need to be replaced prior to the transfer process and the tape may need to be spliced around the damaged section.
There is also limited electronic processing that can be done to try and improve the quality of the vision. There is currently less scope for improving video content than audio due to the nature of the signal content, but we can often stabilize the video content and have the ability to readjust the colours if the overall picture has started to change with age. Sometimes for example VHS content may tend to go pink-ish around 10 years of age. A lot of wedding videos were recorded to this format in the last 20 years and would benefit from being transferred as soon as possible to a new digital format. More comprehensive fix up work needs to go into our video editing suite and this is quoted separately from the normal Video to DVD work.
ProCopy has a number of video tape machines to cater for the wide variety of video tape formats available and can usually help you with your treasured video content. All video transfer processes are what we call “real-time” That is there is no fast way to transfer the content to another format and it will take the length of the programme plus some set up time to copy to another medium.
The benefit of transferring to DVD is that once a master has been created then multiple copies can be produced very quickly and at our normal copying prices.
Like we recommend with audio files it’s a good idea to keep the original master filed away and use safety copies for day to day viewing. You can always make more copies from the stored master if needed and when technology improves in the future you can go back to the master and improve the quality further.
Transferring to DVD is a convenient format but new video formats will eventually surpass this format and provide even better quality and longevity. It is important to store the discs securely and handle the discs with care at all times. Scratches, fingerprints and poor handling can make your discs play erratically or even stop playing entirely. We would also recommend that you keep the original tapes for as long as practical just in case there is a “fatal” problem with one of you copies..
Our Video to DVD process is primarily aimed at Domestic or Home Movies, Old Corporate training programmes and other "one-off" video programmes. Movie titles on VHS or old Reels are covered by the publishers copyright and we have to sight copyright approval in order to make a copy for you. Many movie titles are available on DVD from online stores around the world (and apart from ensuring you can play the format that it is supplied in you will often find that you can buy them cheaper than our transfer process as it's very time consuming). Of course we can also make multiple copies of your new DVD masters in our production department at very cost competitive rates.
Try searching for all your favourite movie titles here:
If you can't find it here, contact us for further help by emailing or calling the office via the contact page.
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