Services / Video & audio transfer
VHS, camcorder tapes, cassettes, and reel-to-reel — transferred while they can still be played
Magnetic tape has a shorter life than film, and the machines that play it are not being made anymore. Every tape is inspected, cleaned if it needs it, captured in real time on a serviced deck, and described — so you know what is on it and not just that it exists.
Why tape is different
The deadline is the deck, not the tape.
A VHS tape from a 1990s wedding is a strip of plastic coated in magnetic particles held on with a binder. Over thirty years the binder softens, the coating sheds, and the signal fades — slowly in a closet, quickly in a Louisiana attic. Camcorder formats like Hi8 and MiniDV pack the same signal onto narrower tape, which makes them less forgiving still.
The harder problem is the player. Nobody has manufactured a VHS deck since 2016, Hi8 and MiniDV camcorders are ten to twenty years past their last production run, and the belts, heads, and capstans in the surviving machines wear out. The tapes will outlive the working decks. What cannot be played cannot be transferred.
So the work is straightforward and time-bound: get a faithful copy off every tape while playback is still possible, and write down what is on it while there is still someone alive who knows.
What happens to your tapes
Five steps · every tape
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01
Inspection
Each cassette is opened and checked: shell and tape condition, mold, broken or stretched tape, sticky-shed on reel-to-reel. Labels are recorded exactly as written before anything is touched.
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02
Cleaning and repair
Mold is cleaned off before the tape goes near a deck. Breaks are spliced. Reel-to-reel audio with sticky-shed is treated so it plays without squealing or shedding.
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03
Real-time capture
Played once, all the way through, on a serviced deck for that format, with a time-base corrector to steady the picture. Tape has no fast lane: an hour of tape is an hour of capture, watched while it runs.
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04
Description
What is actually on the tape — the event, the people, the place, the year — written up tape by tape, with timecodes for the parts you will want to find again. A transfer service gives you a file. An archivist tells you what it is.
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05
Delivery and return
A preservation master and an everyday copy of every tape, named to match the description. Originals come back labeled, in fresh cases, with a note on which ones should not be played again.
Formats and what you get back
Master + access copy, every tape
| Format | Typical condition | Capture | Delivery |
|---|---|---|---|
| VHS · S-VHS · VHS-C | Dropouts, tracking drift, mold in humid storage, sticky pressure pads. 1977–2000s. | Real-time, serviced deck, time-base corrected | Lossless master · H.264 .mp4 access copy |
| Video8 · Hi8 · Digital8 | Narrow tape; prone to dropout and edge damage. Hi8 tapes played in the wrong camcorder can be damaged. 1985–2007. | Real-time from format-matched camcorder or deck | Lossless master · H.264 .mp4 access copy |
| MiniDV | Digital, so it is either clean or gone: dropout blocks, mold, tape stuck to heads. 1995–2010s. | Native DV transferred over FireWire — no generation loss | Native DV master · H.264 .mp4 access copy |
| Audio cassette · microcassette | Stretched or broken tape, print-through, failed pressure pads. Answering machines and dictation. 1963 onward. | Real-time, azimuth-adjusted playback | 24-bit/96 kHz WAV master · .mp3 access copy |
| Reel-to-reel audio | Sticky-shed syndrome on 1970s–80s stock, brittle splices, unlabeled reels at unknown speeds. 1950s–80s. | Speed and track format identified first; treated for sticky-shed if needed; real-time capture | 24-bit/96 kHz WAV master · .mp3 access copy |
Masters are the file you keep and never edit; access copies are the ones you play and share. Both are delivered on a drive you keep, with the description sheet. Tape is priced by the hour of tape, quoted after inspection.
Training and record
Ten years of other people’s only copy.
- Training
- MA, Public History, University of New Orleans — archival and preservation specialty. BA, Film & Communications.
- Institutions
- AV technician at The National WWII Museum. Data archivist and curator, Hurricane Digital Memory Bank — thousands of files, metadata at scale.
- Oral history
- Oral History Chair at the LGBT Archives of Louisiana: recording, transferring, describing, and clearing consent for interviews that exist nowhere else.
- Standards
- PREMIS for preservation metadata, Dublin Core for description. What comes back can go straight into a repository.
Send a photo of the tapes for a free assessment.
A picture of the spines with the labels showing tells me the formats, the count, and roughly the hours. I’ll say what it would take — and which tapes should go first.
Book a free consultQuestions people ask
The camcorder is long gone. Can you still play the tapes?
Yes. Playback is on serviced decks for each format, not the original camera. If a format is not on the list above, ask — it can usually be arranged.
Do I get the tapes back?
Always. Every tape is returned, labeled to match its file, with a note on its condition. Nothing is kept and nothing is discarded without your say-so.
What if a tape is broken, moldy, or squeals when it plays?
Broken tape is spliced. Moldy tape is cleaned before it goes anywhere near a deck — playing it as-is spreads the mold to the machine and every tape after it. Squealing reel-to-reel audio is usually sticky-shed syndrome, which is treated before playback. Do not keep trying to play a tape that misbehaves; each pass costs something.
Will the picture look better than I remember?
No, and be wary of anyone who says otherwise. Tape is captured as it is, with a time-base corrector to steady the picture. What you get is a faithful copy of what is on the tape, made before it degrades any further — not a restoration.
Should I just use a drugstore transfer service?
If you have a handful of clean, labeled tapes and only want to watch them, yes — it is cheaper. Come to me when the tapes are unlabeled, damaged, or many; when you want to know what is on them; or when they are part of a larger collection that needs describing as a whole.
How is it priced?
By the hour of tape, quoted after inspection, with description and file preparation quoted alongside. The free consult ends with a written proposal and a fixed price for that scope.