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Convert VHS to DVD

Even if time stands still, technology marches on. Were you able to preserve your tapes with optimal quality and minimal loss, it's still getting harder and harder to find the machines on which to play them back. It was just yesterday that Betacam SP or Hi8 was all anyone wanted. Today, one is little more than a castaway, and the other is a minor footnote in history. If nothing else, these reasons alone should be enough incentive to update your archives, even if you will just convert VHS to DVD.

The most important reason to convert all your tapes to a digital format is that it will, in essence, stay the degeneration of your video. Digital media provides a means of near-exact duplication and offers greater allowance of error before compromising quality, so even if your digital tape is nearing the end of its shelf life, it will often still be able to provide an output comparable to when its media was first recorded. In most cases, it's also manufactured with more recent technology, which means greater quality and longevity. These factors allow for a continuous and virtually lossless archival path that far exceeds that of any analog format. Converting all your materials to digital is a time-consuming process that is totally devoid of any upfront satisfaction. Depending on compression and your source and destination formats, the conversion process itself may be a cause of lost information. It's easy to get discouraged, but the benefits far outweigh the effort. The trade-off is a more stable picture, and greater recreation accuracy over time. Each day you postpone it is another day the quality of your materials degrades, and the worse your footage looks when you start the process, the less benefit you'll receive in the end. If you have any 3/4-inch tapes, chances are you'll already have trouble getting many of them to show a stable image. This means they're virtually useless for any future projects. This is one project that is unwise to postpone.

It's best to transfer everything you want as one big project. Don't piecemeal, or transfer only the footage you need for your latest upcoming project. This will create a mess with no end. Look at your analog tapes, and say to yourself, "Do I need to transfer everything?" If you're like me, you'll want it all simply for posterity. Consider the following arguments, though, when determining what to transfer:

Con: Forget ever needing any of this footage; the reality of it is that you will probably never even look at much of the material ever again.
Pro: The "Murphy's Law" of post production says, "The minute you don't have access to a particular piece of footage is the very minute you'll desperately need it."

Weigh the costs. If you have only a small amount of footage, by all means transfer every last frame. On the other hand, if you have hundreds of hours of raw footage, be selective. Keep in mind, though, that all your old footage is going to be standard definition. If you work strictly in high definition these days, even your past "epic" shots will be severely limited in their usability.

Take the time to organize your sources, either by topic or by original project. It's best to group tapes with similar material onto the same set of destinations, on a source-by-source basis. Don't bother breaking it down further as the added sorting isn't worth the effort, and you'll likely saturate your destinations with time code breaks, as well as ruining any edit logs you've done in the past. The only time you should ever further subdivide is to correct those times when you put the final product on the same tape as the source material.

Destinations are a different story. Don't be afraid to make compilation archive tapes. There's no reason to put only one master per tape, but refrain from mixing finals with work tapes or raw footage. Efficient transferring will also allow you to regain some much-needed storage space.

Process your masters first. They're not only your portfolio, but, when you're working on a new piece and need a stock shot, your mind will first and foremost remember images in your past products. It's rare that you will remember, let alone want, a shot that you've previously rejected from your earlier works.

Second, process any source footage that appears in a work that is still in progress, and all recent, good-quality sources for use in future projects. After that, move on to source materials from previous projects. Finally, process whatever leftover footage you want. This is usually your unusable, yet sentimental footage. Be sure to account for ownership as well. Anything you don't have rights to use in a future project should take a back seat to something you can potentially use or sell.

When done, I would recommend you keep your analog tapes around for at least six months after transferring, or until you confirm that your transfers are of equal quality, whichever comes first. Pack them in ready-to-dispose boxes, though, so when the time comes, you can just toss them out without further hassle.

Conversion to digital also provides an excellent opportunity for getting organized. If you have no other urgent business, logging the footage as it transfers will provide great benefits later on. If the analog source has time code, you should duplicate it to the new system as well, especially if you have used this footage in past work. If your sources don't possess time code, add it in a logical manner, perhaps changing to a new hour for each source tape. Finally, take the time to develop a logical labeling standard for all your tapes.

Take the time to accurately log your destination tapes into a database. Also, mark each transferred source with a bright sticker, containing date and order transferred. For non-time coded sources, consider advancing the time code on your destination tape to a new hour each time you put in a new source. Make a standard label to use for every destination tape, and standard menus if you are creating DVDs. It makes your library look organized and well-cared-for.