video tape transfer

reproduction, digitising, migration

reasons for transfer

• Magnetic analogue and digital video tape can and does degrade in various ways. The helical scan recording system and video tape transport is more fragile and can be prone to more wear related problems, especially when tapes binder degrades, than a fixed head system used in analogue audio.
• Over the years, as technology has developed, a wide and bewildering range or video tape formats have been developed, released and sold to the public in the domestic, professional and broadcast markets. Many of these have become obsolete, some quicker than others and working examples of many of the machines that can play them back are quickly disappearing as are the spares support from the manufacturers to keep them running.
• Digital storage has become larger and cheaper very quickly recently, the speed of computers and the methods of accessing digital video have  evolved too. Archive and access storage of video that a few years ago would have been prohibitively expensive is now quite cheap. It’s a perfect time to migrate your old analogue and digital video tapes to a digital format that can be preserved and copied easily, distributed and accessed by more people.

areas covered

We appreciate that there are a range of individuals and organisations with important and valuable tape that they may want to transfer. Their budget, timescale and technical needs are likely to be quite different.

Domestic

We like to work with a range of customers and value their recordings whether family memories or rare historical archive. We also recognise that many people will need some of the common domestic video tape digitised just to access in a digital format that is current such as DVD Video. In these cases we can offer a cheaper service as our workflow is quicker, although physical condition of tape must still be assessed before costs can be confirmed.

Professional

Archival

Legal

video tape formats we can transfer

Domestic Formats

• VHS, SVHS, VHS-C video recordings in PAL or NTSC, Long Play (LP) or Standard Play (SP)
• 8mm, Hi-8 and Digital 8 PAL or NTSC, Long Play (LP) or Standard Play (SP)
• Betamax PAL or SECAM, mono or stereo sound
• Philips, N1500 / N1700 / Video 2000
• half inch EIAJ and skip field reel to reel video, PAL
• miniDV and DVCAM, PAL or NTSC

Professional Formats

• 1 Inch Type C reel to reel video, PAL
• Betacam Oxide / SP / PAL / NTSC
• D3, D5, Digital S D9
• DVCAM, HDV / PAL / NTSC
• Panasonic MII / PAL
• U-Matic, low band / high band sp / PAL / SECAM / NTSC

what you will receive

We use a mixture of professional and domestic video tape recorder machines and other tools such as waveform monitors, vectorscopes, time base correctors, frame synchronisers, audio delay units and standards converters, etc to ensure the original analogue tapes play and transfer as accurately as possible.

We can capture to any digital format, file or codec but usually use 8 or 10 bit uncompressed AVI of Quicktime video files. While these files are huge they offer the best master recording from which other digital files can then be encoded from for DVD viewing, web streaming, etc.

Open Source and proprietory tools are used in the capture, editing and conversion of the digital video.

DVD Video

While optical disks are not a recommended archival storage medium as they too can degrade, DVD Video is a popular and very accessible format which we are happy to create in addition to higher quality digital files if necessary.

All transfers are trimmed, encoded, burnt from tapes to DVD with chapter points every 5 minutes and housed in a high quality Amaray plastic DVD case.

More customised editing is possible as is custom DVD creation (authoring), case and surface printing of the DVD. This is different in every case though and must be quoted on an individual basis.

some previous clients

• Glimmer Films
• The Open University
• Bristol City Football Club
• Available Light Productions Ltd.
• Bristol City Council
• John James Foundation
• Places for People
• UK Border Agency
• Owl Optical Ltd
• Bristol Archive Records
• Sounds Commercial
• many more individuals…