10. Ease
With the advancement of technology at the consumer-level, 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 now think about adding chapter markers and interactive menu screens for your kid’s birthday parties instead of sifting through 2 hours of raw footage.

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 from putting together a new scrapbook, creating a graduation slideshow for your children, or even a new commercial for your business. People no longer have to pay outrageous production fees in order to create a viable video for them.

8. Celebrating a Special 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 dusting off the old slide projector, you can show off your fully-edited custom slideshow movie for everyone to enjoy. This is a great way to show off you latest product or idea, while getting everyone in attendance involved.

7. Portability
The newer they are, the smaller they get. This can apply to most media throughout history. Just think about how much easier it would be to do a little bit of 35mm slide scanning, and condense your 35 carousels of slides into a single disc. With video, for instance, 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 as well! 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.

5. Reconnecting With Lost Friends
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
Archiving your family’s media should always be in the back of your mind. 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

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Technorati Tags: audio, film to dvd, Film Transfer, Photo Scanning, scanning, Slide Scanning, vhs to dvd, video, video editing, video transfer

Gather and Organize
I’m sure somewhere in your possession, like most people, is a box or two of old slides, photos, or negatives collecting dust in an old cabinet or drawer. For this entry, I will focus on slide scanning. Generally, people take pictures to capture a particular special moment or setting that can be preserved and shared for generations. However, as time goes on, these forms of media can and will degrade. As you may know, the best solution to this problem is to somehow find the time or money to get all of these images digitized. Depending on the quantity of images, this can be quite a daunting task for any individual. With the right game-plan, and preparation, it could turn out to be a fun, engaging project that will bring your whole family together.

The first step in the process is to determine how many of your slides you wish to have scanned. This is a very important step, as it will help determine which route would be best for you, whether it be purchasing an accessory for your home scanner, rent or purchase a brand new scanner, or to simply have a digitizing service, transfer them for you.

The next huge thing to consider before proceeding is to determine how much time you actually have to devote to the project. For example, if you have a full-time job, a busy family life, and 1,500 slides that need to be scanned in 8 days for Grandma’s 80th birthday, buying a manual feeding scanner isn’t the most practical route.

Note: Resolution or (DPI) is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. So, roughly, a 35mm slide has the approximate resolution of that of a 13 megapixel digital camera image (about 3,600 dpi). So if you scan a slide at less dpi, then you limit what you can do with the final image compared with the slide. On the contrary, if you are digitizing to send to family and friends, then 3 to 6 megapixels (2000dpi) is plenty for the average 4×6 photo print. However, if you plan on blowing the images up to 8×10, 11×14 or larger, you need to start with as big a digital image as possible.

Using a Scanning Service
This is a great solution for a person with a lot of slides, a busy lifestyle, and an eye for quality. Typically digitizing companies will use the most high-end equipment on the market to scan your slides. This can be extremely beneficial for people who want to preserve their slides at the highest available quality. DVD Your Memories also has a dedicated image scanning department and technician who will work on your slide transfer in Orange County or San Diego which provides for much faster turnaround times compared to what you can get accomplished alone.

Renting a Scanner
Renting a scanner can be an effective method to process any number of slides. The rental will generally consist of a Nikon CoolScan of some kind, and will often come with the bulk slide loader, making large orders much easier to process. However, it may be difficult to pin down a place that will rent the equipment to you. Trying local photography stores and studios may be your best bet to start looking. Renting a scanner can cost up to $200 per week, not accounting for time learning to use the machine and software, which makes this option best for people who have working knowledge of the equipment.

Buying a Scanner
Before purchasing a brand new flatbed, check to see if the flatbed scanner you already own can scan slides and negatives. Go to the manufacturer’s website and search for your scanner model and any accessories it may be combined with. Typically, the accessory you would be looking for would be a new top cover that has a scanning lamp in it and is glass on the bottom of the cover, compared to the typical plastic over foam. When you place slides or film on the glass scanner bed, they are scanned with the lamp in the top cover, and the image is captured in the lower array as normal. There may also be some slide and film holders that may or may not come with the new top cover. If you do find you can buy the accessories to get the job done, then all you need to do is decide if the money and the time to do the job, fits with your needs. If you do manage to find a facility that will rent out equipment, this is a great method to get your slides to dvd in Orange County.

There are also dedicated slide and negative scanners available to consumers. For this article I will break them down into three categories; Low-end, Medium, and high-end.

The low-end dedicated scanners are usually equipment that will actually take a 3-5 megapixel digital image of your slide rather than scanning it. These products typically cost around $100, and are much faster at transferring slides as it takes a digital image rather than a full scan. Ion Slides to PC is an example of a low-end slide scanner.

The middle ground is a very interesting place. The bottom of the middle ground, say around $250 to $350, is occupied by some compact scanners that are fully manual, but some offer scan resolutions as high as 7,200 dpi. Plustek OpticFilm 7300 is an example of a middle ground scanner.

The high end of the 35mm slide and film scanner market has traditionally been occupied by the Nikon Coolscan, in its many incarnations, for a very long time. So if you want to scan at 4,000 dpi with possibly the best optics and scan quality you can find, you will part with nearly $1,100, and if you want to use a 50 slide batch processor, add another $500 to the bill. Nikon Supercoolscan 9000 is an example of a high-end scanner.

Keep in mind that most software bundled with scanner products are mediocre-at-best. Play around with the included software, but be aware that there are many, many programs available that work much better than what’s put in front of you immediately. Take some time to do some research, and seek out the most reliable and effective software for your needs.

Final Thoughts
Lastly, ask yourself if you ever plan to take film photos again, or if you are planning to just stick with digital transfers from here on out. If you have no foreseeable plans in the future to ever use film cameras again, it may be more cost and time effective for you to seek out a service to digitize your images, rather than buying a scanner and equipment, learning to use it, and spend time scanning each image.

After you are done digitizing your entire slide collection, you may be wondering what in the world to do with your boxes and boxes of old slides. Some people will throw them out, some will put them back in storage. Before doing anything, I would recommend backing all of your images to an archival-grade DVD or two, in addition to a hard drive. So, dumping you originals is a personal preference. The only issue you may face in the future, is if you did not scan at a high enough resolution for large prints, and down the road someone wants large prints. If you had the originals you have a choice to rescan it at higher resolution to make the big prints of higher quality. Don’t forget to stop by your local DVD Your Memories store this holiday season for some great gift ideas such as;  slide scanning in Orange County or if you have lots of old 8mm, 16mm, or Super8  film, we also offer film transfer in Orange County and San Diego.

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Technorati Tags: convert slides, digitize slides, scan slides, Slide Scanning