If you have a box of old home movies or photos in a basement or attic, you’ll want to convert them to a more long-lasting format. Pictures and film will decay over time. Not only will you lose the quality of your photos and videos, but they could also degrade past a point of no return. You’ll want to enlist the help of a video transfer professional to get your memories digitally preserved in a more permanent and easily shareable format. Here’s everything you need to know about a video transfer service.
What Is a Video Transfer Service?
There are many different video transfer services, but they all do the same thing. They allow you to transfer videos between devices when you need them. This can be very useful for professional or personal use and is something that almost every phone or computer user does at some point.
Video Formats To Be Transferred
Here are the video formats that a video transfer service can turn into digital.
- VHS, VHS-C, and S-VHS: VHS is a type of video cassette recorder (VCR) that uses analog magnetic tape to record and playback videos. You can transfer VHS tapes to digital, but the quality of the footage depends on the condition of the original tape.
- Sony Professional Video Cassettes: Sony professional videotapes are high-quality Betamax tapes that professionals in the television and movie industries use. While Sony has discontinued these tapes, you can still transfer them to digital formats.
- DV Format: DV format is a digital video cassette tape format used by small-budget news journalists in the early 1990s. The software used to edit and play back these files is now long gone, but a professional service can convert it to digital.
- LaserDisc: LaserDisc is a disc-based video format popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Unlike DVDs, popularized in the late 1990s, LaserDiscs use analog technology and can be transferred to digital formats if necessary.
- DVD and Mini DVD: DVDs and Mini DVDs store digital video files. They are similar in size to a CD but can store much more data. Both can easily be transferred to digital through a professional service.
- Blu-Ray: Blu-Ray discs are a physical format for storing video and audio data. They are similar to DVDs but can store more data due to their larger size. You can keep the converted files on your computer or a cloud storage service.
Whatever your video format, a professional video transfer service can help you get it onto a long-lasting and easily sharable digital format.
Video Transfer Service Options
When it comes to video transfer, you have two options: do it yourself or have a professional service take care of it for you. With the DIY option, you may need to purchase expensive equipment and learn the best transfer practices.
However, a video conversion company is much more convenient and of higher quality. Here’s the process.
- Bring in your tapes for transfer.
- Choose your digital format: Digital cloud copies, USB, or DVD.
- The process will be complete in 4-6 weeks (Capture video conversion will complete everything in 2-3 weeks).
Video Transfer Service Costs
Costs will vary from service to service. However, most video transfer service costs are between $15 and $35 per videotape (Capture video conversion costs approximately $10).
Conclusion
If you want to preserve your memories and have them stand the test of time, you need to transfer them from their old format into a digital one. Digital copies of your images and videos will not degrade and are much easier to store, share, and pass on to future generations.
I like that you mentioned how there are many different video transfer services but they all do the same thing. I learned about video transfer from a magazine article earlier and it was quite interesting to read. It seems there are a lot of professional video transfer services now and they all look very useful.