Improving Quality of VHS to Digital Transfers

Why Does Your Tape Look Worse?

The vast majority of video tapes simply don’t look as good as when you either purchased or recorded on to them 20 years ago. Color degradation, flickering, tracking issues, and other problems simply tend to happen when tapes get older. Sun damage, water damage, normal wear and tear, and many other things can create problems on your VHS Tape. If you’re interested in transferring your VHS to digital, this is the guide for you. Often, the problems with old tapes are so bad they’ll distract your from the video itself. However, it is still possible to improve the quality of those old tapes.

Clean Your Tape!

The most important thing to do to improve capture quality is to clean the actual tape itself. We’ve written a fairly exhaustive guide here. No amount of fiddling with your VCR is going to make a dirty tape not look dirty. Clean tapes make for the best transfers, and we make sure to clean dirty tapes before we transfer them at DVD Your Memories.

What You’ll Need for Transfer

If you’re transferring the tapes yourself, you need to fix as many problems as you can while you capture. It’s far simpler to fix problems while capturing than while editing. It’ll save you many hours and probably some money on editing software. To get the best capture possible: invest in a good, reliable VCR, a color correction unit, and a time-based corrector.

A Good, Reliable VCR

We recommend investing in a VCR from either the 1980s or 1990s. At DVD Your Memories we’ve transferred hundreds of thousands of video tapes, and we’ve found that older VCRs perform better. Maybe they were just built sturdier back then. Since production of VCRs has been discontinued, 2025 is unlikely to bring us great new models of VCR. Not all VCRs from the 80s and 90s are equal, though, so we recommend a Sony, JVC, or Panasonic brand VCR. You’ll have to buy a used model, so if the picture on the one you buy isn’t great, make sure to clean it using our guide.

Color Correction Unit

Now you’ve got clean tapes, and a clean sturdy VCR. The next thing you need is a video color correction unit. Color correction units receive the video signal from your VCR and output a color-corrected signal back to your TV. It allows you to finely tune the color of your video by letting you offset certain colors to gain a good color scheme. It uses a digital RGB scale to achieve that. That helps immensely when the color on your VHS degrades into being too “red” for your taste. If you want to save lots of time editing, make sure to adjust your unit before every tape. Your tapes likely have different kinds of damage and aging, so you want to tailor your transfer per tape. Color correction units are easy to adjust, so it won’t be a problem, even if you want to go scene-by-scene.

Time-Based Corrector

Time-Based Correction (TBC) helps keep your digital transfer consistent. Different formats of tapes (VHS, PAL, Betamax, SECAM, etc) have different specifications as to how they should play. Lines and frames per second should be consistent for all parts of your tape, and to the standard of your format. VCRs on the cheaper side sometimes have trouble replicating the exact time standard of the tape being played in it. Incidentally, cleaning your tape and VCR greatly help to reduce that error. Fixing time errors is also what a Time-Based Corrector is for. If your VHS tapes have tearing, red-blue fuzz, or a litany of other issues listed here, you need a TBC. A TBC corrects the issues in real time, repairs the picture it receives, and sends the repaired picture for duplication. No matter whether you’re digitizing your tape or duplicating it, you need a TBC.

Other Issues

Read this if you’ve cleaned your tape and your VCR, invested in quality hardware, and the picture still isn’t up to scratch. Firstly, try playing your tape on a different VCR. Different machines will produce different results, especially on damaged tapes. There’s more art than science to finding the perfect VCR for digitizing your tape sometimes. Make sure you really are using all the hardware listed above: TBCs in particular will help wonderfully in reducing picture tear, fuzz, and other issues.

Editing Your Video

Now you’ve captured the VHS to your computer, the last thing you need to do is edit your video. You’ll want to use high quality video editing software for this – at DVD Your Memories, we use Sony Vegas. Final Cut Pro is also good software for the Mac, and you can get a 90-Day Free Trial, which ought to be plenty of time to edit all your tapes. You want the best presentation possible, so make sure you take time over your editing.

Having a Professional Do It

Maybe you don’t have the time to do all the editing, or you’ve just got the one tape and can’t justify buying a bunch of hardware to transfer only one tape. In that case, we recommend using a professional service in your area. For legacy media transfers, going local is the right way to go. In a world increasingly full of mail-in transfer companies, local ones are harder to find – but there’s almost certainly one in your area. If you’re in the Southern California area, we’ve got four locations all over Southern California.

There are many reasons to transfer your family’s cherished media such as video tapes, photos, slides and film to a more modern, accessible format like DVD. Not only will transferring allow you to view your media at any time, it also preserves your family videos, photos and film to prevent any further degradation!

Here are some of the top ten reasons it is beneficial to transfer your important family memories, NOW!

10. Simplify Your Media

With the changes in media technology, it’s now cheaper and easier than ever to get your old video tapes converted to DVD, photos scanned, and film digitized. Nearly all work is now captured directly into a computer’s hard drive, which allows for relatively easy manipulation of your video, images and audio with no quality loss from the original. You can also upload your footage to a cloud storage system, or video sharing site like Youtube and have peace of mind that your videos will always be safe.

9. Production and Editing

With advancements in technology propelling us to the ‘digital era’, producing quality media from the comfort of your own home or office is now a reality. Once your media is digitized, nearly anything is possible! Things like putting together a new digital scrapbook, creating a graduation slideshow for your children, or even a new commercial for your business are now easier than ever before. Gone are the days of people having to pay outrageous production fees in order to create professional videos.

8. Celebrating a Special or Corporate Event

Do you have a special event planned in the near future? Would you like to create a San Diego custom slideshow or video montage to incorporate into an event? For the next party or get-together, instead of relying on the old slide projector or Powerpoint presentation, you can show off your fully-edited custom slideshow movie for everyone to enjoy. This is a great way to show off your latest product or idea, while getting everyone in attendance involved.

7. Portability

It’s usually true that the newer gadgets and technology of today are getting smaller and smaller — The newer they are, the smaller they get. This can even apply to most media formats throughout history. Just think about how much easier it would be to scan your old 35mm slides, condensing your many carousels of slides onto a single thumb drive. As for video tapes, VHS tapes were the standard for several years until laser discs and DVDs hit the market. As many people know, the more VHS tapes you owned, the more storage space you needed to allocate to them. When digitized however, you can save a remarkable amount of space. Instead of holding onto hundreds of old VHS tapes, you transfer them to some easy to maintain DVDs or even to hard drive to save more space.

6. Entertainment

Reflecting on past events can be entertaining for the whole family! It’s always a treat to catch a glimpse of your vacation from years ago, and re-live the time you spent there. This is also great for family get-togethers or parties especially if multiple people attending are featured on the video! If you decide to go with a video transfer to hard drive, you can do some simple or advanced editing to create a new video for everyone to enjoy. Professionally edited videos make great holiday gifts!

5. Reconnecting With Lost Friends & Family

15 Years ago, you and your friend may have taken a video camera on that awesome trip to Europe. As time goes on, people change locations, and connections are missed or often lost. Without watching that video today, you may never ask yourself, what happened to this person? Where can I find them? Not only is it much easier these days to transfer your media, it’s also become much easier to find and locate people! Sometimes a little reminder is all you need.

4. Family Time

Everyone has busy schedules with school, work, football practice, church, etc. and often, time spent with your own family is overlooked. Once your media is digitized, it provides a great opportunity to spend and share time with family or close friends. People can relate to what they’re watching and can spark up some interesting discussions of the past, and connect with new friends.

3. Technology Changing

Technology is constantly evolving into “smaller” and better things. A closet full of old videos can now be placed onto a plastic drive the size of your thumb and your desk drawer full of photos can now be replaced with archival-grade DVDs. Now that most of the older formats are obsolete and often difficult to see or watch, it’s best to get them digitized sooner than later. As time drags on, it will only start to get more difficult to obtain the equipment needed to perform the video transfer, or image scanning that is right for you.

2. Degradation and Deterioration

During the 80’s and 90’s, most of us were under the assumption that our precious memories stored onto magnetic tape would be safe forever. Recently, however, more and more people are realizing that this is simply not the case. Magnetic tape is great for short term play back of our fondest memories, or to relive a historic event. Video tapes deteriorate every year even if you don’t view them. Your precious memories painstakingly caught on tape WILL someday be unplayable. Most VHS tapes, with proper care, can last up to 20 years with only minor degradation issues. However, since VHS tapes have been obsolete for nearly 10 years now, the timeline is running thin! If you want these images to last, it’s best to get the VHS transfer to DVD done now, before it’s too late. DVDs can last you hundreds of years with absolutely no degradation, as the laser never makes direct contact with the disc itself. I’ve seen where people have, unfortunately, waited a bit too long to get their tapes transferred, and as a result they’re left with a fraction of what they once had.

1. Archiving/Preservation

Due to the threat of media degradation, preserving your family’s memories is very important. Older media types, such as slides and video tapes, were never designed or meant to last forever. It has now become much easier to archive your tapes and images by simply capturing them to a hard drive or DVD. While most consumer DVDs typically last anywhere from 5-10 years, there are a few high-grade brands that will last you 100 or more years with proper care. Virtually all recordings from the last 40 years are in jeopardy, whether it be unique mastered audio recordings or news broadcasts. No tape is safe from the multiple threats that range from physical loss due to disaster, accidental erasure, or the increasing disappearance of equipment needed to play them back. Realistically, most of the inventory of tapes are duplicates of other materials, but many others are originals, masters, or unique content that cannot be easily duplicated. The amount of tapes needed to be restored is so huge, that it would take decades, even if facilities, techniques, and funding were readily available.

If you have any questions regarding the media transfer service, give us an email: info@dvdyourmemories.com

When comparing archival grade DVD-R discs, you may have run across Gold Archival DVDs which claim to keep your DVDs safe and stable for a hundred or more years. These gold DVD manufacturers claim superiority over traditional silver alloy DVDs because using gold on the reflective layer (the part which is read by DVD lasers) helps to minimize the degradation of the layer during long-term storage. However, using gold in the reflective layer also comes at the cost of compatibility due to the fact that gold is less reflective than silver.

At DVD Your Memories, instead of gold archival DVDs, we use premium archival Taiyo-Yuden DVD-Rs that are rated for up to 100 years and have one of the highest compatibility ratings in the Industry. Taiyo-Yuden discs use a specially formulated dye which helps against the breakdown of the reflective layers of the DVD, which makes it important for long-term archiving. Other additives are also used for the organic dye for Taiyo Yuden archival grade DVD-R discs. This minimizes decomposition of the organic dye by heat or light during long-term storage. Check out the chart below to see the differences of discs treated with special additives versus those that have not, after stress testing:

Many media transfer companies still use archival gold reflective discs, not properly understanding the technology involved with disc compatibility in proportion to disc longevity. Premium line JVC Taiyo-Yuden Archival Grade DVDs have the highest compatibility rating in the industry and will also last up to 100 years. Below is a chart showing the error rates difference during extensive disc stress testing:

When it comes time to transfer your important family media, such as VHS to DVD or transfer film to DVD, it’s best to keep a two things in mind when considering which type of DVD to transfer to. On one hand, it’s important to keep your converted media on discs that will stand the test of time, and on the other hand, it’s important to make sure they will be compatible with tomorrow’s technology.

By now, your precious family film collection is probably not quite in the same shape it once was. It can be dry, brittle or curled and might even smell a little like vinegar. These degradation symptoms are what happens to older film if left untouched for long periods of time. Depending on the severity of the degradation, there might still be hope to clean 8mm film to get it ready for an 8mm to DVD transfer and to also make it last for another few decades.

Keep in mind that you don’t need to clean your film often, once every few years should be good enough to keep it in good shape. Overcleaning can actually cause more harm than good in the long run.

How to Clean Your Film

If your film is still in relatively good shape, you can use silicon cleaning cloths to wipe away the dirt and smudges to give your film a polished look. The easiest way to do this is to have a film editing station with a couple of rewinders set up a few feet apart. Place the reel of film on one rewinder and an empty takeup reel on the other side. Now, take your silicon cloth and fold it into a pad and press it against both sides of the film…. using your rewinds, run the film thru the cloth while applying light pressure on top of the pad with your hand. Run the film front to back using this method to make sure you get most of the dirt off.

If your film is in bad shape (very brittle and/or smells heavily of vinegar) this method can still work, but you need to be extra careful not to break or make the damage worse than it is. If you’re not confident in your ability to clean heavily degraded film, we strongly advise to bring it to a professional transfer facility such as DVD Your Memories where experienced film transfer technicians can take a look and assess the damage.

There are also a few chemicals on the market such as FilmRenew and VitaFilm that claim to help cure or reduce vinegar syndrome. We advise to not use chemical treatments on your film unless absolutely necessary as it has a tendency to soften splices, cause fading, and discolor the reels.

With VHS tapes and other magnetic-recorded media, there is no definitive time-line for when the tape will “die” or cease playing in a VCR. In fact, most tapes recorded from back in the 80’s still play without any major issues, although many do exhibit color damage and other detrimental effects. When VHS tapes were first available to the public, they were given a conservative range of about 10-25 years of life before they would stop working. If this were truly the case, nearly all video recorded in the 80’s that hasn’t already been transferred to DVD would be lost at this point. Video tapes still haven’t been around long enough for anyone to know the absolute time limit for any type of tape so the true lifespan of any video tape is an educated guess at best. Also, several factors can contribute to the early demise of your video tapes. The most common factor that contributes is how your VHS tape was stored over all of these years. VHS tapes that were stored in their cases in cool, dark places generally work much better than tapes that have been left in sunlight or a heated area with no protection. We’ve also found that earlier manufactured VHS tapes, such as the tapes released when VHS was at peak popularity in the 80s tend to last longer and are more durable than the cheaper versions which flooded the market in the mid to late 90s as the VHS format was on the decline. If you know your tapes have been in a decent storage environment, chances are they are still good to last a bit longer than they were first advertised to. However, if the tapes contain important family memories, it’s silly to assume they will last forever which is why we encourage important VHS tapes be transferred to DVD, Blu-ray or other modern format. Types of Damage Below are a few videos showing VHS tape damage that can occur over time. Sometimes these can be resolved by using a high quality VCR like the one’s we use in the DVD Your Memories offices, and other times the damage is unfortunately irreparable.

Do you use Memorex exPressit Label Maker? It is a great program for quickly printing labels for your media including DVD, CD, diskette and Blu-ray. The program does a great job providing some basic templates to get you started, but sometimes you might need some additional templates that don’t come native to the program, or perhaps you’re just looking to expand your library of different templates. At any rate, it’s a handy thing to have just in case you ever end up needing them. Rather than scouring the web for the template file you need, chances are you’ll find it in the downloadable pack we created below. These are great for labeling your disks and media, especially after transferring to a digital format like video to DVD, or audio cassette to CD transfers! We’ve gathered hundreds of different label template files including templates for: -CD Cards -CD/DVD Cases -CD/DVD Labels -CD/DVD Lightscribe -CD/DVD Printers -Diskette Labels -Audio/Video Tape Labels -DAT Tape Labels -Zip/Jazz Labels Download printer template pack – 2.20MB Note: The template files in this pack are in .STD format, which can be read by other programs, in addition to Memorex exPressit Label Maker.

Although not needed very often, knowing how to change the speed of your audio files can be important, especially if you are converting old reel to reel to CD or vinyl records to CD, and don’t have the native speed available to you when you initially transfer it. A good example would be trying to transfer and convert a 78 speed record, but your turntable only supports 33 1/3 speed. When the file is done transferring, everything will sound very slowed down and difficult to hear or understand.

Thankfully, there is a very easy fix for this problem by using a free to download program called Audacity. Audacity open-source and is for both Mac or PC and can be downloaded here: https://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/

Once you intall Audacity on your computer, the next step is to find the audio file you’d like to change. To do this, click file->open and locate it on your computer. When it’s loaded, it should look similar to the image below.

Now, to speed up the entire track, you need to select all by either pressing CTRL-A or by clicking edit->select->ALL. Once the entire track is selected, click effect->Change Speed.

A new dialogue box will show up asking for some input as to what speed to change. The nice thing about audacity is that it has preset options for LP records for converting 33 1/3 to 45 or 78 speed and vice versa. This makes it easy if transferring LP records and not knowing the exact percentage. Usually this is enough to get the appropriate speed for your recordings, however sometimes additional tweaks are needed, depending on the audio source.

Alternatively, you can apply the speed changes to sections of the audio by highlighting the portion you’d like to change with your mouse rather than selecting the entire recording.