Convert to Digital. The Best Company to Digitize Home Movies?

No matter what media you need to convert to digital or your specific circumstances, the best digital conversion company for you comes down to the following considerations:

In-person or mail-in service
The expertise of the person working with your media
The expertise of the person structuring your project
Turn Around Time
Quantity and Quality of Equipment
Post Conversion Fine Tuning

In-Person or Mail-In Service to Digitize Video

Do you trust delivery services and the receiving and shipping departments at big companies? Many employees handle your VHS to digital project – family memories that cannot be replaced if lost.

Large companies often provide digital conversion, but they mail your project out to a third party and do not do the work themselves.

If you prefer taking your 8mm film to digital conversion where it remains until you pick it up, then choose in-person service.

Expertise of the Person Working to Digitize Your Mediae

The digital conversion industry is filled with a wide spectrum of expertise. From the seasoned veteran to the one-person side hustle, some have a laptop and gadgets from the internet.

Many larger online companies ship digital conversion work to a third party, but do not have any in-house expertise. The person doing the actual work is in a minimum entry-level position.

Corporate-level contact cannot compare with the experience of a direct connection to the person doing the work. Interaction with the person who works on your project is invaluable, unless you enjoy phone trees.

Expertise of the Person Structuring Your Project

Another person critical to the success of an outstanding project is the person who takes your order. You receive a double bonus when it is the same person.

The experience of a seasoned veteran can mean the difference between a terrific outcome and just average. The nuances of old media can be tricky.

Did you know that various kinds of needles are required for different types of records? Do you know the difference between Video8 to Digital, Hi8 to Digital, and Digital 8 to Digital requirements? How about the difference between VHS to digital and SuperVHS to digital equipment needed to convert your videotape?

Unless you regularly convert analog media, you can’t know what you don’t know. An expert to set up your project can make all the difference.

Turn Around Time

For in-person digital conversion services, the turnaround time for the entire project can be faster than the time it takes to ship the project back and forth with mail-in companies.

Of course, turnaround time depends on the quantity of media in your project. In-person conversion services generally offer times in terms of days, while mail-in services quote times in terms of weeks.

An in-person company should be able to convert most projects in days rather than weeks. Anything over a week indicates inefficiency somewhere in the process.

Quantity and Quality of Equipment

A company with sufficient equipment to handle a large volume of digital conversion projects simultaneously will turn your project around quicker than a side hustle that converts one item at a time.

For example, a company with six VHS stations converts a large project six times faster than companies with one player. The company that converts VHS, film, cassettes, records, Hi8, miniDV, and negatives simultaneously will have a much better turnaround time than one that must work one item at a time.

Equipment quality affects turnaround time because high-quality equipment is more dependable and requires less maintenance.

Post Conversion Fine Tuning

Post-capture processing is one step that is worth the extra time. Mail-in companies usually skip this critical step.

For example, a decent quality video capture will capture the whole frame for tens of thousands of frames on each videotape. Most cameras did not use the entire frame when creating videos, leaving a flickering, ‘noisy’ border.

Most in-person companies automate what they can, but it takes personal individual attention to clean up captured media accurately and precisely. The automated version of a large mail-in operation is OK; the crisp, clean video of a well-crafted in-person conversion is excellent.