Video Data Services

Hi folks, it's been a while since our last blog post, we've been busy converting lots of movie film and video tapes to dvd as well as shooting and editing corporate videos and duplicating lots of high school graduation videos for distribution to the graduating seniors as they continue on their life path. We have had lots of home videos of special family memories coming through our door for transfer to dvd that are 15 - 20 years old....it's amazing how time really does fly....my customers tell me that it seems like yesterday that they were videotaping their kids kindergarten graduations and now they're all grown up...graduating high school and moving on...Well, that brings me to today's topic,,,I recently had a collection of 8mm video tapes come in for transfer ,8mm is a format that began with 8mm, which was then replaced by Hi-8 mm which was a step up in quality,,but not playable on the older 8mm machines,,Hi-8 was then replaced by Digital 8..again, a step up in quality...and again,,not playable on the previous 8 or Hi-8 machines...it's harder and harder these days to find the older format 8mm and hi-8 machines in good working order to play back these tapes,,,and the Digital 8 camcorders and players are very scarce as well. Some Digital 8 machines will not play the older 8 and hi-8 tapes...Now, here's the other problem,,,I'm finding that some older 8mm / hi-8 tapes are not holding up very well over time..Unfortunately, the recent collection that came in for transfer had some serious playback problems,,,these tapes were about 17-18 years old...and the oxide coating which basically carries the image info is shedding off the tape base quite easily, This causes the video heads in the playback machine to clog up quite frequently, resulting in a screen full of snow...I attempted to run 1 tape 6 or 7 times, cleaning the heads before each run and was unable to play back the whole tape. I then began capturing the tape in bits and pieces, sometimes having to clean the 8mm deck every 3 to 5 minutes, this was extremely time consuming and difficult. After spending an entire day on this one tape I was able to end up  with only 10 minutes of usable footage. There were a couple of other tapes in this batch with the same issue...Video Tape has a typical life span of 10 - 15 years, I've transferred older reel to reel helical scan video tape from the 70's, running into some of the same problems, I've also transferred lots of old 3/4" tape, VHS/VHS-C/Betamax/Super VHS/8mm/Hi-8/Digital8/Betacam/Betacam SP/Mini-DV/DVCAM/DVCPRO/...I have some secrets to transferring older format tapes successfully, but as older gear becomes increasingly harder to aquire/maintain and service, and the tapes themselves age, I'm afraid some of these memories are going to be lost forever...8mm tapes in particular seem to fare poorly with time,,,compared to vhs/betamax/3/4" ...the tape width is much smaller and the video heads / drums in the machines are smaller as well, so there's less oxide on the tape base to hold the image and smaller head gaps which clog up more easily.  I'm not sure yet how long the mini-dv tapes currently in use will last as they are more recent...The point of all this is that I feel it is very important to get these images over to dvd sooner rather than later, while a decent transfer is still possible,  before these memories  become just that...Memories....Unlike images from movie film which I've transferred from films 60 years old and older...video tape is a relatively short lived medium....and the memories they contain are precious and priceless....so if you've got some older tapes lying around in the house that are meaningful to you...please dig them out and send them in now...I'd like to help you preserve them for the future..'

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