Should I throw away my VHS videotapes after I transfer them to Digital? NO!

Doing a low cost VHS to digital transfer can be an excellent first step for archiving your precious video memories, but  once on digital the VHS tapes should not be destroyed or thrown away.

If you have already transferred your VHS tapes to a digital format hopefully you still kept your VHS originals. The reason to keep your original VHS tapes is the following. Upon reviewing all the VHS to Digital transfer work that was done, you may find that a couple of your videos have special meaning or an emotional significance to you that rises above the rest of your VHS to Digital Transfers.  Those special videotapes deserve additional attention once the  10 or 20 dollar per tape transfer to digital has been performed.

Think of the low cost, high volume VHS transfer to Digital work that has already been done as if one were taking a physical with their doctor. There may be one or two things that require additional attention, just as there may be a couple of your prized videotapes that require a re-transfer in a supervised setting with a VHS to Digital Transfer.

Rather than spend hours upon hours reviewing the original VHS, review the digital transfers instead. Watch and listen to them. Any VHS transfer to Digital that you immensely enjoy and that means a lot to you can be retransferred at significantly higher quality in an actual VHS to Digital Edit suite when supervised and the video and audio levels are adjusted by an expert.

You may be wondering why not just go off the Digital version of the VHS tape and use that to improve the quality. Sure, some improvement can be done in the digital realm, but the real improvement in quality comes from re-transferring the VHS videotape in an actual Studio Session with a Transfer expert. Then the extra quality gives a digital program even more of an ability to improve the newly improved VHS to digital Transfer.

During the actual transfer from VHS to Digital process adjustments can be made for color level, hue, brightness, contrast, recentering of the picture, tracking adjustment to reduce graininess, 16 step Digital Noise Reduction, YC Delay.

Even the sound recording needs to analyzed.  Was the video recorded in Hi-FI, or was it recorded on Linear Audio only, or both. If the VHS audio was recorded on Hi-FI and Linear then both audio tracks have to be compared to each other to see which one sounds better.

Also, if the VHS recording was done in the six hour mode, then very specialized equipment can be used to improve the visual quality of the Image.

Everyone of these VHS adjustments improves the overall quality of the VHS picture as its being played back and re-recorded onto a digital format.

Those that claim that all improvements are done in the digital realm are only telling half the story. The better the quality during the actual transfer of VHS to Digital, the more information the digital software has to work with and therefore can do an even better job of improving the look of the image after it has been transferred to digital.

Contact Alessandro Machi at vhs at Alexlogic.com if you want to book a session in his amazing Analog to Digital Studio. Alessandro's Studio Credits include over 25 IMDB credits and a Los Angeles Emmy. He is also currently ranked top 25 out of 20,000 Lifetime Tongal Ideationists. Mr. Machi also won the prestigious Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Internship Scholarship Award in the Commercials Category many moons ago.