VIDEO TRANSFERS

Short History

The first video cassette released was the u-matic or ¾” cassette in 1971. This format was expensive and was mainly for professional use such as by TV stations. Betamax video cassette was released commercially to the consumer in 1975, the VHS video cassette was released within the next 2 years. VHS eventually won the format war and became the major preferred cassette for video home use.

In the 1980s 8mm video cassettes and hi8 tapes were introduced as slimmed-down lighter formats for camera use. Digital8 and Mini-DV were eventually released as digital tape formats.

Most video cameras today record to an SD card as a video file. Your smartphone stores videos on a hard drive in the camera/phone.

The Video Editor also has software to convert any of the 50-plus video codecs found in video cameras today.

If you are like the major of people your videotapes are probably not labeled. So, you have no idea what is on the tape. The Video Editor Newport Beach can help. We typically with not transfer recordings from the TV unless you tell us that you were on The Price is Right or Wheel of Fortune. If a tape is blank, we won’t charge you for it.

You’ll probably find some hidden gems recorded on those tapes we convert to digital. Each DVD we make we label, same for the video file we make for a USB thumb drive. With the digital video converter file on the USB, you can easily change the name of the video once you confirm what’s on it.

Videotapes like audio tapes are magnetic and the binding adhesives that were used to hold the magnetic particles on it are breaking down and you’ll notice white specks on the video, or tracking issues. Age and dust are also enemies of magnetic tapes. Sometimes you’ll also hear pops and static in the audio. Hopefully, before that happens you get those tapes to us to work our magic in preserving them to digital which won’t fade, pop, or fizz. When we convert home movies to digital all the goodness in locked for decades and centuries to come.

As a part of our service, if we find a videotape is broken, we will repair it for free then we will convert a VHS to DVD.

Things we can’t help with would be soda spilled on the cassette or salvaged from a flood, or with white mold on the tape. Often if it is critical and you don’t mind paying the fee, we can refer you to a damage expert who will restore the tape.

Once we have completed our video transfer service, we return to you the original tapes. We advise reviewing the USB or DVDs with the videos. Having backup copies will give another layer of safety and security. Back-up DVD copies and extra USBs and even a cloud download link have you covered 3 different ways. Once you are happy you may recycle the tapes or continue to store the old media.

Personally, I have kept my old analog tapes. I can’t throw stuff away.

Today it makes sense to convert home videos to digital given that no one has VCR Video cassette recorder/player to watch them anymore.

The Video Editor video tape transfer service has all the equipment to transfer and convert any type of video cassette. We touched on the fact that not many people have a VCR any longer the same goes for video cameras for mini-DV or digital 8. Either the camera doesn’t work or a key cable or battery is missing. Again, since you don’t know what’s on the tapes, when we convert VHS tape to digital if we find a tape that is blank, we won’t charge for it.

If you decide that you’d like to try to transfer video tapes to digital yourself then you’ll need the right equipment. We would recommend that you find a working VHS player, then you’ll need to hook up a DVD recorder with video and audio cables. Should you want to transfer to a video file like .mp4 you’ll need a video capture card for your computer or a USB capture unit. We have an article on our blog that you can search for to give you more DIY information. However, if things don’t quite work out that route you know that The Video Editor since 1993 is your convenient source to transfer video tapes to digital.

Once have had a digital video transfer you then need to decide which output media you’d like. DVDs come in a variety of formats, but we recommend and use the reliable DVD-R. It is the most compatible disc with DVD players. We convert video tapes to .MP4 video format. This is the most common video format which we normally will place on a USB thumb drive that is compatible with a Mac or PC.

Later, if you decide a .mp4 video file can be used for video editing and it can easily be uploaded to YouTube or shared via storage services like Google Drive.

In our 30 years, we have helped thousands of individuals and businesses to convert cassette video to digital and we hope to help you with your aging collection of tapes as well.

Call us to meet over the phone or in-person to discuss your project. We’ll give you an estimate ahead of time so there are no surprises later. Thank you.