Phone 630-717-0278 or Email questions to memorykeepers@att.net
Please feel free to come-in and drop off your order anytime during our regular hours (M-F 10-6 & Sat 10-4).
THANK YOU to the over 20,000 customers we have served since 2003.
All work done in-house.
Transfer of Analog Tapes (VHS, VHS-C, Video 8, Hi 8 and Betamax, see FAQ below for images of tapes)
- Up to 2 Hours on a DVD (maintains 100% of tape quality)
- To Digital File (delivered on external hard drive/memory stick**)
Transfer of Digital Tapes (MiniDV, Digital 8, DVCAM and microMV, see FAQ below for images of tapes)
- Up to 1 Hour on a DVD (maintains 100% of tape quality)
- To Digital File (delivered on external hard drive/memory stick**)
**to be provided by customer or purchased from Memory Keepers, we prefer customer devices be empty, we do not take any responsibility for files already on devices provided by the customer
Add Additional Tapes to a DVD (Total running time not to exceed DVD capacity)
PAL to NTSC and NTSC to PAL Transfers Available (for VHS, VHS-C, Video 8 & Hi 8 Tapes)*
Stop The Degradation!
Video tape is nothing more than tiny magnetic particles adhered to plastic tape; this is the media format that you need to be most concerned about converting into a digital format. The degradation process is slow but steady. You may have already started to see visible signs of degradation, such as poor tracking, loss of detail, bleeding colors or loss of audio clarity. The quality of the original tape, the recording format (SP, LP, EP), how many times the tape has been played, the age of the tape and storage conditions all have an impact on how soon you will start to see signs of degradation.
Whether you have your tapes transferred to DVD or a digital file, you will have stopped the degradation process!
*TVs in North America utilize the NTSC (National Television System Committee) format. Many TVs in foreign countries utilize the PAL (Phase Alternating Line) format. We can transfer your PAL formatted VHS tapes, VHS-C tapes and Hi 8 or Video8 (8mm) camcorder tapes to NTSC DVDs or digital files. In addition, we can transfer your NTSC formatted tapes to PAL DVDs or digital files.
- WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOING TO DVD AND GOING TO A DIGITAL FILE?
- WHAT IS DELUXE PACKAGING AS COMPARED TO STANDARD PACKAGING?
- WHAT TYPES OF TAPES DO YOU TRANSFER?
- SHOULD I DO ANYTHING TO GET ORGANIZED PRIOR TO PLACING MY ORDER?
- ARE YOUR FILES COMPATIBLE WITH MY WINDOWS PC OR MY MAC?
- HOW MUCH ROOM DO I NEED ON MY HARD DRIVE?
- CAN I BUY A HARD DRIVE FROM MEMORY KEEPERS?
- HOW DO I PLACE AN ORDER?
- HOW CAN I CONTACT YOU WITH QUESTIONS?
- WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOING TO DVD AND GOING TO A DIGITAL FILE?
DVD offers the meaningful convenience of being able to watch your footage in your family room or on your computer through use of a DVD player or DVD drive. You simply give us your tapes and we return the final product; there is no more work on your part.
Customers who are interested in digital files are typically customers who want to do their own editing or simply want to watch the video on their computer or know how to stream footage to a TV or hookup a laptop to a TV through an HDMI cord. If you know you want to do your own editing at any time in the future, you want to have digital capture files. Yes, it is possible (although sometimes frustrating) to try to "rip" the footage from a DVD into a file, but even then, the video had already been significantly compressed when it was burned to DVD. Editing footage already compressed onto a DVD results in a lower quality final product then editing straight from the full digital video quality of the files we create for your hard drive.
More and more customers are getting both DVD and digital files, as they want the discs to view and share now and they want digital files for down the road when they have time to do their own editing and provide custom DVDs for specific family members, or simply to have the files for whatever future generations may want them for. In addition, digital files provide a great back up. Files on your computer or an external drive, as long as they are backed up, provide the ideal archival storage.
DVD provides archival storage also, as long as you have a backup set that is stored in a safe place, that is used solely for back up and not as a set that is played on your DVD player. Our DVDs are rated for 100+ years, but that assumes the recorded surface remains unscratched and free of fingerprints or any foreign substances.
- WHAT IS DELUXE PACKAGING AS COMPARED TO STANDARD PACKAGING?
Standard packaging includes the DVD with no label or titling on the outside of the disc. The top of your disc will be a blank shiny silver surface. Your disc will come in a full-size DVD case.
Deluxe packaging includes your title on the outside of the disc as well as appearing on the DVD case cover insert on the face and on the spine of the DVD case. In addition, the case cover insert can be removed and there are lines on the back for making any notes you would like to record.
- WHAT TYPES OF TAPES DO YOU TRANSFER?
We transfer many different types of video tapes:
- VHS (analog format)
- VHS-C (analog format)[shown here with its standard VHS adapter, which you do NOT need to provide]
- Betamax (analog format)
- Video 8 (analog format)
- Hi 8 (analog format)
- Digital 8 (digital format)
- MiniDV (digital format, SD and HD, we also do DVCAM on miniDV or full size DVCAM tapes)
- MicroMV (digital format)
- SHOULD I DO ANYTHING TO GET ORGANIZED PRIOR TO PLACING MY ORDER?
You may want to think about organizing your tapes prior to placing your order. If you have a way of putting your tapes in chronological order, Memory Keepers can create DVDs or digital files to follow a date order. Simply number your tapes in the order you would like them transferred.
Some customers prefer to have each tape put on its own DVD, while others ask us to combine tapes where possible, without changing the chronological order. For example, if you had 12 VHS tapes to transfer and you numbered them in the order you want them transferred, we would follow that order. Prior to transferring your tapes, we would run the tapes in fast forward mode through our equipment to figure out how many recorded minutes are on each tape. Let's say tapes 1, 2 & 3 had 115 minutes in total of recorded video. Since a DVD can hold up to two hours of analog footage, we could include all three tapes on to one DVD.
Since each DVD from one tape costs $20 and any additional tapes added to a DVD are charged at $5 each, the total cost for this DVD would be $30. This makes it cheaper than it would be if each tape went on a separate DVD ($60, 3 x $20). If the rest of the tapes all had more than an hour of recorded footage on each, no more combining could take place and each tape would cost $20 to transfer.
If you don't care about the order of the tapes or are simply unable to order your tapes, you can request that we group your tapes in such a way to create the fewest DVDs.
- ARE YOUR FILES COMPATIBLE WITH MY WINDOWS PC OR MY MAC?
Our standard definition digital video files are generically referred to as "digital video" or "DV". The file extension is .avi and the files run 13 GB per hour.
We strongly recommend your adding of the VLC Media Player for Windows or for MAC. (videolan.org) This is the best video playing software we have ever found and it’s FREE. It plays any format we have ever tried playing. (It’s a great alternative to the Quicktime player for MAC, as the Quicktime player will only play a very limited number of file types. When it won’t play a certain file type, it tries to convert the file to quicktime, which takes forever)
We can work with either Windows or MAC formatted hard drives. If you buy a drive from us, we will format it as exFat, which is universally playable on Windows or MAC.
- HOW MUCH ROOM DO I NEED ON MY HARD DRIVE?
Our digital video files run 13 GB per hour of video.
- CAN I BUY A HARD DRIVE FROM MEMORY KEEPERS?
Yes, as a convenience to our customers we can sell you an external USB hard drive. Typically the drives are 1 TB drives. For smaller jobs, we may be able to utilize 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB, 64 GB or 128GB USB thumb drives. Please contact us regarding current prices.
Please note that Memory Keepers does not offer any warranty on the hard drives we sell. Any problems encountered with a hard drive purchased from us would need to be addressed by the customer by contacting the manufacturer.
- HOW DO I PLACE AN ORDER?
Please see Place Order
- HOW CAN I CONTACT YOU WITH QUESTIONS?
Please use our Contact Form or call us at 630-717-0278.