A while ago, I wrote about how you can transfer your family movies on VHS to iPhone or iPod. Smartphones of today are getting extremely technologically advanced. For something that fits in the palm of your hand, it can do an extraordinary amount of tasks, and do them well. Capturing priceless moments using the built in camcorder is no exception.

For this guide, I’ll be detailing how you can convert your recorded iPhone videos to dvd and transfer them onto your computer. For starters, you’ll need your iPhone of course, as well as a data transfer USB cable and a working version of iTunes. The first step is to connect your iPhone to your computer using the data transfer/USB cable. Ensure the drivers are all loaded properly. Click on your start button, then click on My Computer. You should see your device showing up as a hard disk drive on your computer. Double click the icon, and you will now be in a root directory full of all the photos and videos you’ve shot with your phone. Simply drag and drop the videos or photos from the phone and place them wherever you’d like.

Be default, your videos will likely be in MP4 format, which is not the correct format for placing onto a DVD movie. To rectify this, you’ll need to convert the video to an MPEG2 video, which you can find out how to do in the next guide, How to convert video files to MPEG2 format. However, many modern software companies will include a built in video to dvd conversion process right into the program. So, likely, all you’ll need to do is open your DVD burning software, select the files you’d like to burn onto a DVD, and then just hitting burn and let the conversion happen.

Need help? Give one of our stores a call!

We have offices that can handle iPhone video to DVD in Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego!

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With all of the different format of video tapes throughout the years, it can be hard to keep track of what camera you have and which tapes are compatible with what. With the 8mm tapes in particular, 3 different types of tapes were released that all look identical to each other. The first tape to release was the 8mm tape or video8, followed by the release of the Hi8, and finally the Digital8.

Thankfully, the camcorder manufacturers had the sense to make their products backwards compatible with older versions of the tapes. So if you had several original 8mm tapes, you’d be able to play them on your Hi8 or Digital8 camera. However, you wouldn’t be able to play your Hi8 or Digital8 tapes on your old plain 8mm camcorder. This makes it easy to play back your whole collection if you were to obtain a Digital8 camcorder.

All of the tapes are housed in nearly identicle cassette casings. Digital8 tapes are a bit easier to spot due to the fact that they display both the Hi8 running time (120m) and the Digital running time (60m). It’s a little tougher to tell the difference between Hi8 and Video8. Hi8, for instance, could also be used for recording Digital8 footage, which would then make the tape incompatible with a Hi8 camera, even though the tape says it is. This is often confusing for people who purchase cameras looking to view or transfer their video8 to DVD or Hi8 to DVD. If your completely unsure of what kind of tape you have, it may be best to purchase a Digital8 camcorder, so you can be sure it will play all tape formats.

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Most VHS tapes just do not look as good when played today as it did 20 years ago. They can suffer from all sorts of symptoms such as color loss or degradation, warping, flickering etc. Often times these problems can be so severe, that it can distract from the video itself. Thankfully, with a little bit of knowledge and equipment, you can still get the most our of your old video tapes.

The fist step to improving the quality of your VHS tapes is to start at the source, and make sure your tape is cleaned, and in good condition. Sometimes you may find that you need to repair your VHS tape and put it in a new shell. You’ll also need to find a good quality VCR. Transferring your tapes in a poor quality VCR will be much much harder to restore with software. It’s always recommended to get the highest quality initial transfer as possible.

Sometimes I’ve found that the VCRs from the 90s will play old tapes better than a brand new one from the store. VCR’s are not all created equally and so sometimes it’s a gamble to find a really good piece of equipment. The types of VCRs that will give your the most improvement on your VHS to DVD transfers would be a professional name brand or broadcast quality VCR with a built-in or standalone TBC, or time-based correcter.

Once you have a good working VCR in order, you shoud also look into obtaining a color correction unit. These nifty devices receive the video signal from your VCR and allow you to finely tune the colors of your video so that you can get very close to the original colors on the tape. Again, this step of correcting the color at the transfer source will save you editing hours later on. Sometime different scenes will shift to different colors, so it’s wise to monitor your video so that you can make any adjustments needed as it’s recording.

Once the video has been transferred to your computer, the last step is editing the video clip through a software based video editor such as Final Cut Pro or Sony Vegas. With these programs you can touch up the video and remove any remaining blemishes, as well as clean up the audio if needed. If you follow these basic steps, you will dramatically improve the quality of your VHS to DVD or VHS to hard drive transfers.

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Since our move to Irvine back in June, we’ve been helping people from all walks of life transfer their family’s VHS to DVD, film to DVD, audio tapes to CD, as well as our other great services. With our services extending to the great city of Irvine, DVD Your Memories has quickly risen to the local leading media transfer center for nearly all of Southern California! We dedicate ourselves to providing our customers with a wonderful, emotional experience as we bring your fading memories back to life again. Now that the holidays are fast approaching, what better way to spend the new year than with your family and friends? Now you can have all your memories with you for the next holiday season, on DVDs!

We encourage you to help spread the word so that other families will not lose their memories as time goes on. For many people around the country, the thought of converting their videos to DVD is still buried deep in their subconscious. Our VHS to DVD in Irvine will transfer all of your VHS tapes onto our 100-year archival discs, to ensure maximum lifespan.

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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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