For legacy media transfers, going local is the right way to go. In a world increasingly full of mail-in transfer companies, local ones are harder to find – but there’s almost certainly one in your area. If you’re in the Southern California area, we’ve got four locations all over Southern California. After 30+ years transferring millions of tapes, film, and photos we discovered that less than 25% of people even watch their digital footage. Most people don’t realize that with standard digitizing they’re just getting back a DVD or USB with hours and hours of unknown footage.

Samsung DVD-Recorder, VHS VCR Combo Player

But we still hold dear weddings, childbirths, first steps kept in VHS format. Unfortunately, magnetic videocassette tapes crumble within several decades or their quality degrade. To extend the life of your videos from VHS tapes, you’d better convert old videocassettes to the DVD format. These prices are quite reasonable compared to other conversion services on the market.

If you head to the YesVideo website, you’ll find conversion services starting from $30 per tape for the first two hours, and then an additional $30 for every two additionalhours of converting. But the price you pay at Walmart or Target could be lower. These prices have been trending upward in recent years, so if you’ve been waiting to get your tapes converted, you might want to get on it.

All of your videos will get transferred to a single USB stick, there is no time limit. Press “Pause” on the DVD recorder and fast-forward the VCR/camcorder through parts you want to edit out.

Way 2. Convert VHS to DVD with VHS DVD recorder hardware

“But after I uploaded some of those files to YouTube, I reconnected with a lot of people from that time. We even got a little following. It was cool to remember that part of the journey.” If you have analog tapes, such as Betamax, Hi8, and VHS, you’ll need a VCR that plays the type of tapes you have. If you don’t have a VCR, try sites such as Craigslist, eBay, and Freecycle to find a low-cost one. If you or a family member was a prolific photographer back in the day, you may have a number—okay, scores—of photo albums or shoeboxes full of loose prints stuffed into closets. Sadly, these start to feel like unwieldy clutter and can’t be easily shared with relatives, copied, or organized the way digital photos can be. To simplify things for everyone else, here’s a guide for converting VHS to digital and getting your old media out of the attic and ontoyour computer.

VCRs on the cheaper side sometimes have trouble replicating the exact time standard of the tape being played in it. Incidentally, cleaning your tape and VCR greatly help to reduce that error. Fixing time errors is also what a Time-Based Corrector is for.

Why Does Your Tape Look Worse?

If you’re just too busy, we’ve also got a list of the various VHS conversion services, including pricing, to help you preserve that 20-year-old home video of you bailing on your first bike. IMemories will transfer your VHS or any other video tape up to 2 hours for the base price of $14.99 per tape. Then to have the video stored on USB will cost $19.99 per USB drive up to 8GB storage for a total of $34.98. Depending on where you live there may be several local video transfer services that do the actual transfer themselves and don’t ship your tapes to another service.

However, it is still possible to improve the quality of those old tapes. Evaluate your media before selecting a video transfer service.

Read more about vhs to dvd conversion here.

While not as convenient as wireless mirroring, MHL will get the job done — and the only thing you’ll need is an MHL-certified HDMI cable. Read on to learn more about MHL and how to use it yourself. You can turn them into digital files with the right software. There also may be local shops in your area that perform similar services, so check Yelp or ask around to see what might be available. This method can get pricey quickly, depending on how many tapes you have, but it requires almost no work for you. If that means the job actually gets done (rather than sitting on your to-do list forever), it’s well worth it. This machine to transfer VHS to DVD offers three burning modes, Blu Ray, DVD Creator, and UHD Creator.