VHS to DVD in San Diego | Tips & Guides | Film to DVD

Transferring from a VHS tape may seem easy at first glance, but many problems can arise from something as simple as a VHS to DVD transfer. Before you begin to transfer any tape, quickly inspect the tape for obvious signs of mold, dirt, cracks, splits, or anything at all that may look off about it. Even the smallest abnormalities of a VHS tape can cause major headaches when it comes time to transfer them.

Once you’ve determined that the tape is in good enough condition to be transferred, it’s time to insert the tape into the deck and begin the video transfer process. The type of deck you use can also play a large role in the success or failure of your video transfer. Most of the cheaper decks you’ll be able to find can host a variety of problems. One of the most frustrating, and hardest to remody issues of older video tapes is bad tracking or video stabilization issues. This is often a result of aging tapes, or tapes that have been recorded from misaligned or bad recording heads. The best way to combat this sort of degradation is to obtain a deck with highly rated video stabilization or tracking features.

Once in a while, no matter what you try to do, a tape will simple not want to play correctly on a given deck, and yet it will play flawlessly on another. This is when having a backup, or secondary VCR can come in handy. If you have plans to convert a large number of tapes, especially older or important videos, it would be wise to get ahold of a secondary VCR to offset the fact that some tapes may not play on the first one you tried. This could help prevent you from having a batch of tapes that cannot be transferred.

Another common problem with older tapes can be color degradation. Often times, the colors will shift to a blue, red, and sometimes green depending on the type of tape, and how it was stored over the years. Virtually all tapes that are over ten years old will display characteristics of color degradation, at varying levels. The best way to neutralize this color shift and bring back the original colors is to rent or purchase a color correction unit, or filter that hooks up from your VCR to your monitor. These filters can greatly enhance the overall quality of your video transfers, at a marginal cost.

DVD Your Memories was started in 2006 in order to help people convert their precious memories to DVD or digital formats.

Many people are starting to realize that the need to transfer their important family memories onto DVD is rapidly approaching. Many people have already transferred their home movies, but unfortunately, they transferred them onto inferior, poor quality discs. As a result of this, some are losing their family memories MUCH sooner than they would have ever thought! If you are planning to transfer important data to DVD, we recommend doing some quick research about which brand of DVD media would be best to transfer your camcorder videos onto.

It's been reported that over half of all media you find in the major retail stores are of inferior quality. Simply buying the 'best' name brand, or most expensive media on the shelf will not always yield high quality discs. With great care, these inferior discs will maybe last you 10 years before the dye and adhesives start to break down, thus ruining the data and rendering the disc unplayable. Due to this reason, it's recommended to use archival media that is rated to last decades with proper care. Purchasing poor-quality discs will, in the long run, only lead to lost time and money.

With important data such as home movie transfers or <a href="http://www.dvdyourmemories.com/services/photo-scanning">scanned photos</a>, it's best practice to use an archival-grade media to store them onto, as well as an external hard drive. The discs we use to transfer all the media we receive such as slides to DVD, video to DVD, film to DVD, etc. are rated to last over 100 years! This will allow you more than enough time to guarantee your data's safety, and an opportunity to keep that data with you for the rest of your life. The brand we recommend is Taiyo-Yuden, which is manufactured out of Japan. We have found these discs give us the least amount of errors and headaches. There are a couple other great brands such as Verbatim +R/-R discs, Sony DVD+R/-R discs, however, these are getting harder to find.

You may have seen some companies promoting the fact that they transfer media onto "Gold Archival DVDs". There are some facts about the gold DVDs everyone should be aware of. Gold discs have much lower reflectivity than compared to the standard dye DVDs, which causes a lot of disc read and write errors and other compatibility issues to occur. Many of the gold discs we tested had a much lower successful burn rate than compared to the Taiyo-Yuden brand. If you are considering transferring your own media yourself, ensure that the hard work you put into converting everything over to the digital world will not be in vain. Invest the couple extra bucks to get the archival quality media that will ensure you never lose a precious memory again!