Home Videos to DVD

Types of Video Transfer

Do you have old home videos of your children or grandchildren that you would love to be able to watch again but you have no way to view them? Let Digital Heirlooms transfer them to DVD for you to watch and enjoy all over again. We offer two levels of transfer, Economy and Advanced.  You can then watch your home videos in your DVD player or on your computer.  We use the industry standard JVC DR-MV150 VHS to DVD recorder and we transfer VHS, VHS-C, MiniDV, Hi8, Digital 8, and 8mm tapes.  Not sure which kind of tape you have?  We have all the tapes listed below so you can compare.

Economy

With the economy transfer option we do a straight tape to DVD transfer with no editing of footage.  All the footage is kept together and you will have one clip to choose from in the menu.  We transfer 2 hours of footage maximum per DVD.  We only do two hours because anything more would degrade the quality of the footage.

Advanced

With the advanced transfer option we will edit your home videos by removing any blank footage only where there is nothing to be seen or heard.  We will then break apart your individual recordings and create custom chapters with scene selection of the individual clips.  If the tape has been labeled we will do our best to match the label up with the clip otherwise a brief description of what is occurring in the clip will be used.  We transfer 2 hours of footage maximum per DVD.  We only do two hours because anything more would degrade the quality of the footage.

Types of Tapes

How many video tapes will fit onto a DVD?

Let’s use a regular VHS tape as an example.  A VHS tape recorded at standard speed (SP) holds a maximum of 2 hours of video. We will only copy 2 hours of video per DVD to retain the highest quality possible of your recording.  If you have a VHS tape that was recorded at 4 (LP, Long Play) or 6 (EP, Extended Play) hours it will require additional DVD’s. This means that if you have a VHS tape with 6 hours of recording time, it will take 3 DVD’s to copy the entire video.

Advanced Option Only – MPG Files of your clips

If you choose the advanced option you also have the choice of getting your individual clips in separate MPG files.  MPG files are ideal for sharing online through Facebook and YouTube.

Want to edit your own videos?

If you would like to edit the footage yourself we can convert your home videos to an editable AVI format.  The files will be very large so an external USB hard drive is required.  The hard drive must be purchased through Digital Heirlooms to ensure quality and no viruses.  Please note: In order to edit the footage you will need video editing software like Adobe Premier, Sony Vegas, or Roxio Creator.

Organizing your Videos

We highly recommend organizing your videos (as much as possible) based on the order you want to view them after they have been transferred.  Organize and label your videos in containers or bags exactly how you want them transferred as we will transfer your videos in the order in which they are received.

Tips on organizing and labeling

Are you finding it difficult even knowing where to begin sorting your videos?  We completely understand!  So many of the tapes are not labeled and often the recordings are not in sequence.  Unfortunately unlike photographs, the only way to know what’s on your tapes is to watch them.  If you are lucky enough to have a player that will still play your tapes we encourage you to watch them and then label them exactly how you want them labeled on the DVD.  If you have several decades of videos, try sorting them by year and then by decade.  A few tricks to do this is by looking at the progressive age of children or people in the videos, those good old hair styles, or the types of clothes they are wearing (shoulder pads, need we say more).