Summer brings with it exciting vacations. At the top of many a summer vacation checklist is the video camcorder. But just how many vacation videos will just end up on a shelf with other vacation videos? Going through this large stack of VHS and Super 8 movies can really put some stress on someone. It will take great time and effort to turn a large number of VHS tapes into a handful of entertaining DVDs.
The biggest dilemma with older films and tapes is that they are on media that eventually can (and will) deteriorate. VHS tape is doomed to lose the original quality simply by virtue of its physical composition. Your memories could be trapped on these videos unless they are safely converted to DVD.
I would strongly suggest you pay for the professional to do the transfer. It will just make life that much easier and give you a better quality video transfer to a digital format. All you really need to know is will you need your tapes and films digitized to DVD or will you require an external hard drive that you can connect to your computer? Companies such as Home Movie Depot and Yes Video (serving Costco and other stores) are usually able to provide good conversions to DVD for an economical price. You get DVDs of your old movies and tapes that will easily play on your own home DVD player.
But, if you really want the absolute best quality for all of your movies and the ability to edit those movies on a computer, then you are going to want to have the videos converted to a higher-quality uncompressed file format on an external hard drive. Some of the mid-level to the more sophisticated transfer companies will be able to give you this kind of transfer service as well as the regular DVD service. The technology used by the best of the best is equal in quality to Hollywood technologies used to transfer shots of film to a digital format during post-production. If your goal is to preserve all of those family memories with the best possible quality, then you will want to explore one of those higher end companies.
If you need any kind of help picking a reliable transfer company, you can go to my internet site (see below) where I show the Better Business Bureau ratings for a number of U.S. companies that provide very good service.