ABOUT OUR VIDEO TRANSFER SERVICE
THE PROCESS
First, you obviously need to get us your tapes. We recommend making an appointment and dropping them off if possible, but if you'd rather mail them in, feel free to do so, just make sure you include this order form. If we're transferring to an external hard drive, make sure you include that in the delivery. Once we have your tapes, we're off and running. Our service and pricing is based on the most efficient usage of 3 hour DVDs. If you have many short tapes, they'll be combined onto as few DVDs as possible with a DVD menu. If your tapes are very long, they make be broken up into part 1, part 2, etc. Other arrangements can be made of course, but may incur additional fees. We will then label each DVD as indicated by you and that's it, your memories are safe forever! We'll arrange a pick up time or ship your original tapes (yes, you get your tapes back) and DVDs to you for an additional S&H fee.
TURNAROUND
Turnaround time depends largely on the size of the project. Most of our projects are completed within 3-5 business days, but please allow for up to 2 weeks for larger projects.
QUALITY
By transferring your video tapes to DVD your are protecting the content against further natural degradation and physical damage, NOT improving the quality of what is on the tapes. Most older tape formats recorded 4:3 standard definition video, and that is what will be on your DVDs. Transferring footage does not repair footage already damaged or compromised. If there are damaged sections of footage on the tapes, they will show up on the DVD, unless you specifically request it to be edited out (this is done at an additional cost).
HARD DRIVE TRANSFERS
If you'd prefer, we will transfer your footage to an external hard drive provided by you. You will need to specify if your hard drive is PC or Mac formatted. We export Quicktime files, so you'd need to ensure you could view these (Quicktime is a free download). Note that we do recommend transferring to DVD over hard drives though, as like all electronics, hard drives can fail, and you'd be right back where you started!