VHS To DVD Service Options

An overview of the transfer services available

As you plan the transition of moving your aging VHS tapes in your personal collection to the more durable DVD medium, there are several options available to help you with your transition; you can convert the tapes yourself or you can look into several commercial options. While transferring your VHS tapes to DVDs yourself does give you control over the entire process, from beginning to end, paying for one or several of the available VHS to DVD services does offer several advantages in terms of time and effort.

On the commercial side of things, there are several companies, either found locally or on the internet, that can help you and provide services that you may find very useful. Here, we look at some of the common and not so common services and how you might benefit from them.

Repair of Broken and Damage Tapes
You have probably had the experience, like many VHS owners, of having your player literally eat your video tape or the cassette itself being damaged. If something like that has happened, it may be wise to invest in the services of a company to repair and rebuild your VHS tape.

There are some things that you should be prepared for if you use this service. If the tape itself is broken, a technician will have to cut the jagged edges to splice the tape back together and this will result in a few seconds to a few minutes of video being lost. In the case of the cartridge casing being damaged, a technician will have to transfer the entire tape mechanism into a new one.

While it may be a relatively simple operation to splice the tape together, it may be best to hire someone to take care of this for you, especially if you have a lot of damaged tapes. In the case of broken cassettes, you will need an empty cassette to transfer your tape into and the company offering the conversion service will have a ready supply of those.

Uncompressed Video Files
This is a service that is offered by very few VHS to DVD conversion companies and is one that very few people will have a need. The video on your DVD uses complex algorithms to remove information to compress a file and allow it to fit on the DVD disc. Each time you edit and compress a video file, you loose information and if edited and saved successively over many times, this will result in a degradation in video quality. If you are planning to do some editing to your VHS tapes, it is best to work with uncompressed files and then compress for the final DVD burn to get the best output.

Be aware that uncompressed files are quite huge and depending on the screen size and color resolution, this can run up to 1.2GB per minute of video time. While it is possible for you to do this at home, you may have to allocate a separate portion of your hard drive or buy a separate hard-drive for the sole purpose of saving your video files, making this a time and resource consuming process. If you have a lot of tapes, the savings may come in time spent in converting your tapes and the resources needed to keep those super-large video files.

Chapter Menus
Many VHS to DVD conversion services include chapter menus as part of their conversion service. Chapter menus allow for easier navigation during playback and depending on the service offered, your authored DVD will have chapter marks placed either at five or ten minute intervals or at certain scene changes. There isn't much flexibility in the standard option but this is adequate for most people.

Few places offer customized chapter placement and if you need your chapters to be placed at specific locations, you will have to find someone who offers such a service.

Combining Tapes
The standard 4.7GB DVD holds about two hours of video and many companies will burn up to two one-hour tapes on one DVD as a standard service. If you need to put more than two VHS tapes on to your DVD or if you have special editing requirements, you will need to find someone who offers something that caters to your needs.

Custom Services
Custom services can cover anything from specific editing requirements, chapter placement and menu options to the inclusion of captions into your DVD. This is probably one of the most expensive service being offered and one that few companies offer.

Hiring Someone or Do it Yourself
There are many reasons why you may choose to take advantage of the services offered by a VHS to DVD conversion company instead of doing it yourself. The conversion of your VHS tapes to DVD is a time and resource consuming process and if you have a huge library, even with good hardware and software, this can turn out to be a monumental task. Depending on your needs and how quickly you want your tapes converted, you may want to look at the services are being offered and how to balance your needs with what they can do for you. You may find that having someone convert and author your entire collection or picking and choosing some services and authoring and burning the final product works best.