vhs to dvd companies?

sammyw

Can anyone reccommend a company to put our home videos on to dvds? We did think about doing it ourselves with a dvd recorder connected to our vhs player, but the tapes are not great quality and are very jumpy as the tracking is rubbish. Have we lost these forever or are there companies who can 'clean it up' and record onto dvd?

ckerrd

There are any number of companies that do this sort of thing - yell might be a good place to find a local one.

Is the tracking on your VHS machine completely shot? You could try borrowing someone elses machine possibly

There is software/hardware you can buy that lets you hook up your video player and then use the pc to create DVDs. I keep meaning to buy it as we have masses of old tapes, including Betamax.

MVC

I must declare a vested interest right now - one of my companies offers a video to DVD service. I'm not punting for work - just hoping to enlighten forum members with a some decent information on the subject.

If a recording is in poor condition there is no magic solution to restoration - crinkled mouldy tapes will yield poor results. With time and effort footage can be improved. We do have tools which can reduce analogue noise and there are some tricks which will improve the perception of quality but these aren't usually cost effective for domestic video transfers.

Colour & contrast can be also spruced up a bit using a colour corrector. A time-base corrector (TBC) will ensure that the DVD Recorder sees a clean signal regardless of how bad the source tape is. That doesn't mean the footage will be cleaned-up in the visual sense, it simply means the electronic signal will be restored to a good level.

A professional company will use good quality, well maintained SVHS decks, time-base correction hardware, Y/C (S-Video) connections and a decent DVD recorder for basic transfers. Some of the better SVHS decks analyse the source tape in order to achieve optimal playback quality.

All-in-one DVD/VHS units can sometimes be OK but often struggle with poor quality footage. You get a warts-and-all transfer if you are lucky. Quite often the DVD recorder side will throw a wobbly (copyright error messages) or just give up and stop recording.

A lot of people comment that their old videos look much better on DVD. There are a number of reasons for this.

1) Professional kit is better specified and better connected resulting in cleaner images.
2) Their VHS player, if they still have one, is connected via SCART/COMPOSITE. The DVD player could be connected via COMPONENT/SCART or even HDMI which results in much clearer video.
3) Their DVD player may add a little sharpening when decoding footage.

It does need a decent level of kit and knowledge to do a good job. For this reason we're not the cheapest company offering video to DVD services - nor would we want to be.

There are some very low cost offering being promoted on the web. If something looks too cheap/good to be true ask yourself why that might be.

When you look around try to make sure you know exactly what you are going to get when you entrust your family memories to someone else. If you can't personally meet them and hand over your tapes then give them a call. Ask a few questions. See if they sound like decent people.

If you have the time and desire to edit the footage yourself you can also have the tapes recorded to an external hard drive. Most computers include basic editing software and DVD Writers.

Some words of caution. Recordable DVD discs are simply two bits of plastic with dye sandwiched in the middle. When a disc is "burned" the laser changes the way the dye reflects light. Recordable DVDs are incredibly fragile! Flexing a disc, leaving it in direct sunlight or extreme heat can ruin it with no chance of recovery. The underside of recordable discs scratch easily - even the "tough" type branded discs. I would always insist on having at least one spare copy to store in a safe place and do not get rid of your original tapes unless you really have to.

Hope this helps.

marbella

That helps, but how much does it cost roughly?

ckerrd

Well through the magic of google - about £20 per tape/DVD seems to be the cost

Be_Happy

We've used the following company a couple of times. Cost was £10 per tape plus £4 postage. Was only for one VHS each time, so don't know if there is discount for quantity. Quality was good, just don't expect an improvement on existing VHS tape.

www.memoriesonvideo.co.uk

kentdeller

Convert My Video - About £10. I have used them plenty of times - very reliable!

eschaton

Or buy a machine for £90 and do it yourself unlimited times.

gatita

Don't want to hi-jack this thread, but I would like to buy for my husband a "machine, whatsit thingy!!!" to convert his large collection of treasured LP's to CD's can anyone help please.

I did see a machine but its costs a fortune, well nearly lol £350 a cheaper solution would be great

ckerrd

gatita wrote: »

Don't want to hi-jack this thread, but I would like to buy for my husband a "machine, whatsit thingy!!!" to convert his large collection of treasured LP's to CD's can anyone help please.

I did see a machine but its costs a fortune, well nearly lol £350 a cheaper solution would be great

Seems a tad cheaper

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?criteria=N23HH&DOY=7m12

gatita

Thank you ckerrd, goodness that would save me a fortune!!!!