Home Movie Libraries to DVD
It only seems overwhelming!
If you are like most people, you’ve had VHS, VHS-C or 8mm video cameras, collecting tens of tapes, most of which you can’t enjoy any longer because your camera broke years ago, your VHS player doesn't work and you can’t play back anything. We’re going to organize it all for you.
This 50 disc set contains nearly 100 edited hours of video with customized menu’s & chapter links generated from 137 videotapes!
What will we do and what might it cost?
Initially we will estimate your order based upon the running times of each of your tapes. Estimates include a spreadsheet with the identities and running times of each tape and depending on the size of your collection, estimates can cost between $25.00 and $100.00 to produce and will take approximately 10 days (or less) to complete. Estimate costs will be credited towards your project 's overall cost. We urge you NOT to try to organize or weed out tapes that you won't be transferring, we will identify them for you in this estimate stage, plus it saves you a lot of time. Every successful multimedia production that is produced correctly is subject to the same logical steps in preparation to commit the "final edit". The steps are known in the trade as Pre Production, Production and Post Production.
As it relates to developing your Library with us, see the steps described below. Pre production is the first act, consisting of our meeting, interview discussion and planning. We will ask you a series of questions which will help us to understand your project in detail, i.e. people we expect to see, places we may visit, names, dates of birth and what significant events you may want for a chapter's link. Production and Post Production are combined in this Digital world. These steps transfer all of your media into our computers, setting up the proper chronology, clip away the waste, scenes will be corrected for color balance, illumination and transitions will be set up in between segments. If there is any segment that we cannot identify without your initial help, we will render a small segment of it or capture a still image from it and email it to you for proper ID. ALL projects require your input and answers to questions via email so that ID's are made and scenes properly placed. It is in this stage where your opportunity comes in to have us eliminate video that you don't want to keep.
It is this thoroughness that places DTV at the top in this cottage industry of archival preservation. We will review each and every disc compilation searching for our favorite still images which represent everything that is on that particular disc. After we select the images, a collage is created to be used as a background for your Main Menu and your Scene Menu. That same collage is used as the artwork for your disc label and your hard shell box art. Images used in the art are selected at our own discretion, so please advise us if there is someone you don't want to look at as in the case where we might select an image of your least favorite uncle. Rendering is next and is the computer lingo for the method of locking all of the adjustments and additions to the components and assuring their proper performance in playback. Once the render is complete we'll build the project in the DVD authoring software. This is where your discs' attributes are directed. For example, we tell the program where the links go, what they are named, how they are presented, what happens when you put in the disc & what happens when you hit this button or that button on your players' remote control.
This process consumes hours of hands on time invested into each individual disc to set up the customized parameters before we burn the first DVD. NOTICE, we do not drop your tape into a machine with a blank disc and walk away.