VHS Conversion service or do it at home yourself?

I, like many other people i’m sure, had a bunch of VHS tapes at home, mostly collecting dust. I wanted to do something with them, but the question was do I pay someone to convert them for me or do I do it myself at home? Here was my experience and now what I tell others at the start of their journey as well.

I am massively nostalgic and sentimental. It takes me a lot of time to throw the smallest thing away and love anything that reminds me of the 90s and my childhood. So I am often the one in the family who will get out a VHS to watch. I noticed some of our VHS players started to become less reliable and tapes started to deteriorate. I started to think about whether or not I could transfer my VHS tapes to digital or whether or not I should take them to someone else to transfer. There are definitely advantages and disadvantages to both.

What I tell people when they ask me what I would recommend, and what I am going to tell you - is it depends on your circumstances. On the off-set it may look like doing it yourself is cheaper, but this may depend on a number of different factors:

• Do you still have a working VHS player?

• Can you get software that is compatible for your computer?

• How many tapes do you want to transfer?

A story from my experience might shed some light on why these questions are important. I bought the software to transfer my tapes over myself - because I had a lot of tapes to transfer and it seemed like a good investment. I had what I thought was a good working VHS player as all the tapes played. Perfect - I thought I was ready. When the software arrived I found that the VHS player I had didn’t work with the software, for whatever reason I couldn’t get any sound. I had to source a new one. During the time I was sourcing a new VHS player - apple did an upgrade to their operating system that changed the way video worked. The result of this was now my software was only compatible with PC - and not the iMac that I had. I have now found that it looks like the VHS to digital conversion software is both more expensive and more difficult to find for the new mac software. Finally once I had the VHS player and the new software - I also had to invest in a bunch of new cables. What seemed easy at the start turned out to be more complicated then I initially anticipated.

Another important factor is time. To transfer from VHS to any form of digital media - you have to play the tapes in real time. There is no cheating in this - its the only way it works. So if you have a lot of tapes - it may seem worth investing in the software but do you have the time commitment to put towards playing each of the tapes in real time and checking to make sure they all transferred correctly.

Finally, and something that may not be everyone’s experience but was mine - was that when I transferred my initial batch of VHS tapes that the sound and video was out of sync. Luckily I have editing experience and a lot of patience to go through and edit the sound to match the tapes. And maybe this being out of sync wouldn’t bother many people - but it really got under my skin.

So if all of this sounds cumbersome to you I would recommend getting someone to do it for you and take the hassle out of your hands! Also why not take a look at our services to upgrade your videos with a curated experience, with the addition of music or photos to create a lovely keepsake.

If it is something that you find interesting however, and want to know more about I’m happy to provide some advice either way.