Did you know
your videotapes have an expiration date? With the
convenience and popularity of videotapes, most of us assume our
special video recordings are permanent. But in fact they begin
to lose information immediately after being recorded. We
preserve your irreplaceable videos by converting them to DVD.
Imagine this....You
pop the videotape of your wedding or the tape of your child's
first steps into the VCR. At best, the colors and images have
faded and the picture is a little snowy. Or worse, the picture
is unwatchable and the sound garbled. It's not a matter of
if your tape will fail but when.
Your personal videotapes will not
be playable within 20 years, most likely closer to 10-15 years.
But if you wait that long to preserve your videos, they won't be
worth saving anyhow, because of the significant loss of video
quality. The videotape was never meant to be a long term storage
media. Due solely to the weakening of the binder, which holds
the magnetic particles containing the video data to the plastic
tape material, videotapes continually release their magnetic
information particles over time until eventually the tape is
unplayable. Environmental conditions can speed the process, but
nothing is going to stop it.
Equally as bad, simply playing a
videotape causes some wear. The older the tape is the more
deterioration will take place each time it's played, because the
older binder material is weaker and therefore more particles are
ripped away each time it's rubbed by the spinning player heads.
Magnetic media's sensitivity to
static shock or common electric fields further confirms it's
inadequacy as a storage media. All or some of the information
stored on videotape can be wiped out by a simple static shock or
an electric field from a household device as common as a VCR,
stereo, speaker or TV.
DVDs, on the other hand, have ideal
characteristics for the long haul. DVDs will last a minimum of
100 years, though some tests suggest in excess of 500 years.
DVDs never wear out, so they can be played millions of times
without losing any quality. The data surface on DVDs is optical,
not magnetic. The data surface is protected by a layer of
polycarbonate, the same material used in bullet proof glass. DVD
data is digital, so copies are exactly the quality same as the
original. DVD video data is the format of the future and is not
in jeopardy of becoming a lost format. The Library of Congress
and National Archives Service use DVD and CD for long
term storage. So should you.
Eyeful
Productions has been providing families and businesses
with the highest possible quality videotape conversion services.
Our experience, combined with the very best professional
equipment available, results in the best DVDs possible.
Service you can trust, quality that can’t be matched ….. that’s
Eyeful Productions.
