Video Recovery Service: How To Bring Videos To The Digital Age

Hard Drive Recovery Group, an Irvine, California based data recovery service, is reaching out to the wider community to share their new blog post: Welcome Your Home Videos To The Digital Age. The company is dedicated to providing high quality data recovery services to the residents of California and the surrounding areas.

Maureen Davies, a representative for Hard Drive Recovery Group, says, “What with all of us being more or less being forced to stay inside, safe from the dangers of the pandemic-ridden world, a lot of us have surely started looking inward for things to keep ourselves occupied and productive; and what better way to keep yourself busy than by taking any and all of your old VHS videos and converting them into a digital format?”

Davies adds, “Now more than ever, we understand the importance of family and family memories. Chances are that every one of us has events from the past — whether it’s a birth, vacation, school event, parties and so on — that have been recorded on pre-digital media. While there are definitely positive aspects to VHS, the truth is that the VHS format is quite fragile and has a tendency to degrade. After all, you may already have experienced some videos being erased or degraded. By acting now, you can give yourself a good, productive project and save your memories at the same time.”

Hard Drive Recovery Group explains that, while the process of digitizing old photos is quite easy and straightforward, it’s not quite the same for VHS videos. However, there are several ways for one to go about it.

One such option is to use a DVD recorder. As the company explains in their blog post, “You would only need to spend on a VCR player, a DVD recorder and some DVD-R discs where your videos will be transferred to. With some cords, you can connect them all to your TV, and after some hours, viola! Your home videos will now be in digital format!” This process will save a lot of money compared to a professional service, especially if there are a lot of tapes to be converted. This is also a method that requires minimal effort.

Another option is to connect the VCR to a computer. By connecting the VCR player to the computer via specialized cables, the digitizing process can be done with relative ease. Hard Drive Recovery Group also says, “Make sure you have some DVD-R discs (unless your computer has some seriously huge space where the digital videos will be saved to) so that your converted videos can be played not just on your PC or laptop, but also on your DVD player. Of course, you will also need software that creates DVDs.”

There is also the option to just use a professional. While it is entirely possible for the conversion of VHS tapes to a digital format to be done by anyone, even with little to no experience, people might opt to reach out to a professional anyway. Whether this is because they do not want to deal with the DIY process or just want to avoid taking the risk of any damage to the videos, there are many digital transfer services that anyone can take advantage of. This means that there is zero need to invest in software and equipment; however, there will be a cost associated with the service. The other problem with this method is that it might not be viable during the pandemic, because many stores are still closed.

Hard Disk Recovery Group advises, “Costco offers a digital transfer service through its Photo Center. You can transfer several types of videotapes to DVDs, including VHS and S-VHS, Beta, VHS-C, Hi8, Digital 8, 8mm and MiniDV.” The full post on Hard Drive Recovery Group’s website offers more detail.

Those who want to learn more about Hard Drive Recovery Group and their services are welcome to visit the company's website to get started. Hard Drive Recovery Group also maintains a presence on Facebook where they frequently post updates, share media and communicate with their customers. In addition to Facebook, they can also be reached through the contact form on their website. The company also encourages interested parties to directly get in touch with Maureen Davies via phone or email.