Video Tape was a wonderful invention. It made creating home videos fast and easy and the videos could be kept for years. But that was 10-20 years ago. Now those tapes are deteriorating, and your precious memories are in danger of literally fading away. That's why so many people are turning to digital conversion, and not just for home movies. The Library of Congress were quick to realized that information should be digitized as soon as possible before it was lost forever to the ravages of time, and as a result the Digital Preservation foundation was been set up as long ago as in 1995.

Yes, we can upload your videos to YouTube. What's more, it's free of charge when you order anything apart from our tape to DVD service. Please bear in mind that you'll need to provide us with your YouTube ID and password to allow us to upload video  to your existing YouTube account. We can always register a new account if you don't already have one.

There are two possible problems. The file could have become corrupted during the download or the required video codec may be missing on your computer. If you've downloaded a few files from Best Video Studio before and you can't play any of them, the chances are that the required codec is missing.  To fix the problem, go to http://www.free-codecs.com/download/k_lite_codec_pack.htm and download  and install the following K-Lite Codec Pack. Otherwise, try downloading the corrupted file again.  

It all depends on the way you plan to share your video. We can convert your VHS and any other video tapes and deliver them as a DVD disk. You can play the disk on any DVD or Blu-ray player. This way is perfect if you intend to share your video with anyone who prefers to watch on TV rather than a computer. Transferring video tapes to digital files is ideal for people who use computers and smart phones for video sharing. Video recorded as a digital file can be easily uploaded to the internet and even edited. And of course, uploading home videos to YouTube or any other video sharing website will guarantee that your precious memories will be saved forever. Best Video Studio can transfer your home video from VHS straight to YouTube or Vimeo.

Yes, shipping is free for all DVD and Blu-ray discs we produce for you. But we will charge flat fee $15 for return shipping of your originals. If you prefer not to get your originals back, please let us know, and  we would store them up to one month for free or securely destroy  them upon receiving your permission.

You have to save video and pictures files from your phone to computer first. After that you will be able to upload them to Best Video Studio website by clicking on "Upload Files" icon

You have no limits on number of pictures and video files that you can upload.

As technology stands today, it would be extremely unlikely if a modern DVD player didn’t play a Best Video Studio DVD-R disc. We can safely say that an estimated  99% of modern DVD players will play a Best Video Studio DVD-R disc. However, if you have any doubts about your particular player we recommend that you consult your DVD player manual or visit the manufacturer’s web site to ensure that your model supports DVD-R disc media.

Best Video Studio carries everything out in-house, so we are able to keep a watchful eye on the entire process from start to finish. What’s more, we have a state-of-the-art studio and our products and services are considered to be the best available. Unlike the majority of others who provide similar services, Best Video Studio does not outsource any work.

No limit at all. Best Video Studio can handle your order no matter what size it is.

They can. Feel free to provide whatever combination of materials you would like to be digitally mastered and Best Video Studio will deal with the entire order.

Yes, we do. Best Video Studio accepts rush orders for an additional 20% of the fee. Turnaround and availability of rush orders depends on 1) the customer’s involvement in the project and, 2) realistic timing based on the size of the order. We aim to complete rush orders in under a week. Customers can help to speed up the delivery process by upgrading to expedited FedEx shipping (next day or 2-day express).

Well, that is entirely dependent on the size of your project and the time of year (holidays are always busy). Average turnaround time for Best Video Studio Preserve (transfer to DVDs) is 1-2 weeks.

Best Video Studio can convert film, video or audio from any format, from the lowest to the highest professional quality in all internationally recognised formats. However, in accordance with U.S. and international copyright laws, we are not permitted to transfer or duplicate commercially copyrighted material, unless prior permission has been granted by the copyright owner.

Yes, we convert traditional photographic prints, negatives and 35mm slides and deliver them to you in the form of digital files for your computer or slide shows playable on DVD or Blu Ray Players. Blu Ray Disks are the best thing for video slide shows because they permit a lot more detail to be preserved.

The most practical, convenient and reasonably priced method of preserving your home videos is to convert them to digital format which, unlike perishable video tape, will never deteriorate. Digitized home videos can be stored on a wide variety of media such as DVDs, hard drives, digital videotape, etc. Best Video Studio will protect your home videos in any digital video format you request. This could be DVD, Blu Ray, digital video tape, external hard drive, or iPhone/iPod, or any other popular mobile media playing device format (PSP, for example).

Reputable couriers such as FedEx and UPS are extremely reliable. In all the time that we’ve been receiving orders from all over the country we’ve never had a lost parcel. To be on the safe side, send us your package by overnight express and we’ll receive it the following morning. Sending your project back on completion is less of a worry because we’ll have a back up copy of your digitized media.

Any type of still images: photos, negatives, slides and any other flat printed media you wish to include in your slideshow. Any video format; this includes all home video types (VHS, Betamax, MiniDV etc.) and most professional formats (Betacam, DV cassettes etc.), and in both PAL and SECAM formats. We can also handle ree-to-reel home movies in 8mm and 16mm format with or without sound. And speaking of sound, we can digitize audio cassettes, reel-to-reel audio tapes, and vinyl records.

Yes, you could, but in most cases you will find that digitizing media at home is a tedious, time-consuming, hit and miss affair that often produces disappointing results. Best Video Studio uses professional, state-of-the-art equipment and a tried and tested process which can be relied on to produce the best results every time.

We fully appreciate your concern and would like to assure you that we do our utmost to guarantee that your priceless memories will be handled with the greatest of care and respect throughout the scanning process and returned to you in the same state that they left you. As individuals who also have irreplaceable films and photos that we cherish and wish to preserve we understand the disquiet you might feel when sending your family heirlooms to be handled by comparative strangers. And finally, on a pragmatic level, the loss or damage of any of our customers’ property would be disastrous for our business.

Yes, with two limitations. Firstly, you must have a YouTube account, and secondly, any music on your video must be licensed. Best Video Studio will either register a new YouTube account under your name or request login information for your existing account if you would like your video If any video uploaded by Best Video Studio is not available for download on YouTube, please let us know immediately and we'll provide you with a direct download link from our website.

Video Tape was a wonderful invention. It made creating home videos fast and easy and the videos could be kept for years. But that was 10-20 years ago. Now those tapes are deteriorating, and your precious memories are in danger of literally fading away. That's why so many people are turning to digital conversion, and not just for home movies. The Library of Congress were quick to realized that information should be digitized as soon as possible before it was lost forever to the ravages of time, and as a result the Digital Preservation foundation was been set up as long ago as in 1995.

It really depends on the speed of your internet connection. Normally it shouldn't take longer than 20-25 minutes for one file. Best Video Studio will split you video into files of 14 minutes in length to make your download and future sharing easier for you. If your Internet connection permits, you can speed up download process by downloading all the parts at the same time. If not, you can ask us to upload your video to YouTube, this will eliminate the hassle of downloading and make sharing easy.

No, the transfer process is carried out on fully automated equipment. We may however need to flick through random parts of your video to check the overall quality and to install certain DVD features. We transfer any type of content unless it is illegal.

The navigation menu is the first thing that will appear on your screen after you insert your DVD. The menu allows you use the remote control to choose (navigate to) which parts of your show (chapters) you would like to watch. You can also access the menu by pressing “menu” on your remote control while the disc is playing.

Yes. If you use a combination of tapes there will usually be a discount of 20% on the overall cost per tape. If you’re thinking of combining a fairly large quantity of tapes short extracts please contact us for a quote.

VHS, S-VHS, VHS-C, Betamax, Betacam SP, Video-8, Hi-8, Digital-8, mini-DV, Laserdisc, Digi-beta, 1", and DVC-Pro.

If you want the highest quality, a DVD will hold 2 hours of video. You can squeeze more on but the quality will suffer noticeably and we don’t recommend it.

Yes, a special filtration system in our transfer process is designed to reduce noise, minimize jitter, and ensure perfect frame synchronization.
NB: It is not possible for us to correct your video frame-by-frame! If there are any major questions about the original picture quality our technical department will get in touch with you to discuss them.

It costs $20 for a DVD containing up to 2 hours of video. If your tape was recorded in LP (long play) or ELP (extra long play) it may last 4, 6, or even 8 hours in which case  the charge will be $20 multiplied by the final number of DVDs needed to. For example, 6 hours of tape will require 6 DVDs amounting to a price of $60.Find out more about pricing.

Best Video Studio can add a complete music soundtrack to your silent film footage for a fee. You can either provide the commercial music yourself, or purchase commercial music at $1 per song.

Yes. At Best Video Studio we can enhance your home movies in exactly the same way that a Hollywood studio enhances its old feature films. Best Video Studio uses the power of advanced digital technology in combination with a team of highly trained film editors and colourists. This enables us to correct colour, enhance brightness and contrast, and touch up defects in your home movie films. When the digital mastering process is complete your film footage will be looking great.

Best Video Studio uses a high quality process employing state-of-the-art equipment which captures all the individual frames of your old films, thus enabling us to get the highest quality digital capture available today. This advanced frame-by-frame capturing process gives the crystal clear image quality that is the hallmark of all Best Video Studio Archives.

Certainly. Best Video Studio can convert PAL to NTSC from all sources, be they VHS, VHS-C, 8MM, Mini DV or DVD.

Different regions of the world use different video formats. The standard North America format is known as NTSC. PAL is used throughout Europe and many parts of Asia. For example, a European PAL tape cannot be played on an American NTSC player.

Yes. We can seamlessly splice your broken videotapes back together for an additional fee of $24.99.

Approximately two hours of videotape fits onto a single DVD.

A good question! Not all DVDs are the same and it may surprise you to learn that a slight difference in quality can mean a massive difference in longevity - from 5 to more than 100 years! But rest assured; Best Video Studio uses only the finest quality DVD media available - archive gold media. The manufacturers of archive gold DVDs test their product under a variety of extreme environmental conditions, ensuring that  Best Video Studio archive gold DVDs have a lifespan of around 125 years. Other service providers generally offer "silver" DVD media. This will only last for between 5 and 25 years (depending on quality) which is little different from the expected lifespan of most commercial analogue video tape (example: VHS and 8mm).

Yes, you will. Best Video Studio will send the final Photo Slideshow to your Best Video Studio Online account where you can review it online. After you’ve viewed and approved it, Best Video Studio will publish the final Photo Slideshow to DVD then mail it to you along with any original media you may have sent us (i.e. your music CDs, photos, negatives, slides and miscellaneous printed media used to make up your slideshow).

If we take 5 seconds as the average duration of each slide on screen, and assume that most commercial songs last about 3 minutes, then we can say that you’ll get approximately 40 images per song.

Best Video Studio can add a full commercial music soundtrack to your Photo Slideshow on DVD. You can choose the tracks to be included and specify their playing order. For copyright reasons, you are required to send us the original (physical) CDs in their original retail packaging before we are allowed to use the music from them. Alternatively, you can purchase your music tracks from a commercial online music download Website, and Best Video Studio will be happy to help you with this.

No problem. All you have to do is upload your digital photo files to our website. And in this case, of course, you won’t be required to pay the $.59 per image baseline scanning fee.

A Best Video Studio Photo Slideshow on DVD will cost you only $.30 per photo, negative or slide image. There is also a baseline $.55 charge for the scanning which must be done before original photo, negative or slide images can be converted to digital format.

The slideshow can be made up of any combination of digital images which our technology can scan and process. First and foremost would be photographic prints, negatives and slides, but there’s nothing to stop you from spicing up your slideshow with any other types of paper media that can be digitized with our scanners; things like old postcards, posters, newspaper articles, brochures, theatre tickets, menus, love letters, kids paintings, college diplomas, anything you can imagine!

A Best Video Studio Photo Slideshow on DVD is a compilation of photographs put together as a DVD video slideshow. This can be watched on any television or computer monitor (as long as your computer has a DVD drive). Each image is programmed to display for a specified period of time (5 seconds, for example) and then to change, through a smooth transition, to the next image until the slideshow has reached the end. You can control the slideshow with the DVD remote just as you would a movie, using the play, pause, fast-forward, etc. as well as the menu features. You can enhance the show by adding a music soundtrack and the disc can store up to 1,600 picture images.

Unfortunately, .JPG format photos on DVD will not play in older DVD players, however if you have a newer model with special JPEG-compatible slideshow features you will have no problems. Most customers without the newer type of DVD players can still view their photos on TV via a DVD player by having  Best Video Studio create a Best Video Studio Photo Slideshow DVD.

Best Video Studio arranges your files and folders on disc to mirror the way your ideal physical collection would be organised - in other words, by sequence of photos, roll of negatives, carousel of slides, etc. Let’s say you had an album of photos called “Paris - Spring 1999”, Best Video Studio would place all these images together in a folder with the same name.

For a photo DVD, Best Video Studio will scan your images in high resolution, converting them to a digital photo file format known as a .JPG file - photo files from today’s digital cameras are .JPG. These digital images are compiled onto a DVD-ROM. The images are then ready to be shared electronically. They can be e-mailed, displayed on blogs, used for photo slideshows, etc. The images can also be used to print out traditional photos, make photo books or a whole host of other photo gifts and novelties like calendars, t-shirts, greetings cards etc.

Best Video Studio provides all your digitized photos in JPG format on DVD. DVDs store much more data than CDs - 4,700MB (Megabytes) or 4.7GB (Gigabytes) of data. You can fit 940 photo images on a Photo DVD data disc. In addition, if you order a Best Video Studio Photo Slideshow, you’ll get approximately 1,600 digital photo images on one DVD and each one will be displayed for 5 seconds.

Yes. Best Video Studio will provide the final Photo Slideshow to you in your Best Video Studio Online account. After you have reviewed it online, and given us your approval, we’ll publish the final Photo Slideshow to DVD and ship it to you along with your original media.

You choose the tracks to be included and specify their playing order. For copyright reasons you are required to send us the original (physical) CDs in their original retail packaging before we are allowed to use the music from them. Alternatively, we will gladly arrange for you to purchase your musical choices online and then download them for you.

Yes, you can either mail your digital images to us on a CD or simply upload your digital files to our website.

This is a slide show on DVD that works in the same way as a DVD movie. It will play on practically all DVD players and has the same menu, play, rewind etc. controls. The interactive features can be customized and you can also add a music soundtrack of your own choice. The disc will hold up to 1,000 images.

Think of yourself as the movie director with the Best Video Studio team as your trusty film crew. Like all movie crews we have the talent and the expertise but we need someone with a vision to bring everything together. But, don’t worry; we’ll get you started by asking you a few simple questions about your preferences. Then, we’ll ask you to direct us to the proper home videos and photos you’d like to use and the order in which you’d like to use them. This won’t take long at all. Finally, after we’ve put everything together, added a soundtrack and a few tasteful special effects, we’ll ask you to review the “final cut”. Unlike making a Hollywood movie, the whole process is designed to be fast, simple and fun!

Yes they are. The Best Video Studio Professional Editing Team will use their technological skill and creative talents to add the appropriate, tasteful cinematic flourishes that will give your custom Best Video Studio Movie a sophisticated, high-end look and feel.

We will work closely with you to achieve what you are looking for in the final Best Video Studio Movie, offering sound advice and suggestions based on our experience. If you aren’t quite sure how to explain exactly what you have in mind, we have devised a series of questions that we frequently ask our customers in order to better understand what they are after. This generally gives us enough information to proceed with and deliver the movie of your dreams. But of course there is nothing to stop you from giving us detailed instructions about the running order of your video clips, photos and musical soundtrack, which we are happy to follow to the letter and provide you with your Best Video Studio Movie.

A Best Video Studio Movie is a tailor-made video/photo montage with a musical soundtrack. It is Best Video Studio’s premium product featuring the magic moments from your life and the lives of your family and those around you recorded by you and transformed by us into a full-blown cinematic music video experience - memory lane meets the yellow brick road.

In a majority of cases people tend to have an assortment of film reels and videotapes, not to mention a further multiplicity of formats such as 8mm, Super8 and/or 16mm home movie film. Then there’s Betamax, VHS, 8mm and/or MiniDV videotape, the list goes on! So, in practical terms, a DIY project would prove extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Added to this, even if you have access to the older equipment needed to play your reel-to-reel movies and VHS tapes, the commercial grade capture and conversion equipment generally available is deemed as fairly low-end. This being the case, the quality of the resulting DVD would suffer. Unfortunately, the professional grade equipment needed to digitize home movies and videos at the highest possible quality is, for most people, prohibitively expensive.

Finally, consider the time and patience required to carry out such a laborious job. Even with all of the necessary equipment and skills, the average “family" project would take between 50 to100 hours to complete.

Save time, money, and peace of mind by putting your home movie archive project in the capable hands of Best Video Studio. Our team of dedicated professionals, using state of the art equipment, will get it right first time - allowing you to sit back with your family, relax and enjoy the fruits of our labours for generations to come.

Extra copies of your DVDs may be ordered anytime before you complete your order. You can do this after you’ve filled out your order online. When you’re checking out, simply indicate how many extra copies of each DVD you’d like. Details will then appear in The Best Video Studio Shopping Cart.

Both use the same equipment, the same settings and produce the same high-quality scans.
However, in Regular Scan we perform additional enhancement and finishing procedures:

• Image rotation to the correct orientation
• De-skewing (levelling the image)
• Cropping any visible border effect
• Colour correction
• Thorough quality check
  

If you plan to edit the images yourself the Economy scan is your best bet.

On most modern DVD players you will. However .jpg image files will not play in older players. Most customers without the newer type of players can still view their photos on TV via a DVD player by having Best Video Studio create a Best Video Studio Photo Slideshow DVD.

Best Video Studio arranges your files and folders on disc to mirror the way your ideal physical collection would be organised - in other words, by sequence of photos, roll of negatives, carousel of slides, etc. Let’s say you had an album of photos called “Paris - Spring 1999”, Best Video Studio would place all these images together in a folder with the same name and name the individual files: “Paris - Spring 1999-001”, “Paris - Spring 1999-002”, etc.

The actual scanning is the same in both cases but the Economy scan does not include the final finishing off process of the Regular Scan; this consists of any re-orientation, color correction and other quality checking that may be necessary. If you’re at home with picture editing software such as Adobe Photoshop and you intend to finish the images yourself, the Economy Scan is a good choice for you.

Whether we’re scanning photo prints, negatives or slides Best Video Studio will give you the same crystal clear quality thanks to the professional standard of the technology we use.  However, what really makes the difference is the condition of the source material itself. For example, if you have a faded print but a clear negative you’ll obviously get a better image from scanning the negative.

No. Best Video Studio can handle as many as you want.

Best Video Studio will scan your printed photos, your negatives and/or slides and transform them into high-resolution digital .JPG format – this format is used by the majority of modern digital cameras. Each image is scanned on professional grade equipment after which it can be edited and enhanced.