How It Works

1. Gather Your Old Photos & Videos

Get all of the photos and videos together that you want converted to a digital format

2. Start Your Order

Fill out our order form to get the process started. There is no obligation. We will contact you to discuss your needs.

3. Get Your Materials To Us

We offer two ways for you to get your videos or photos to us. Click here for details.

  1. Bring them to us in Spring, TX
  2. Mail them to us

Address given during the communication process.

The Process

Once we receive your source material, we will add a small label in order to identify which tape or reel goes with which digital file.

All tapes are run through players and captured as a computer file. We do not actively monitor the tapes as they are played. A timer is set on the recording software and the tape is run. Once the files have been created, they are run through editing software. Here, excess time is trimmed from the beginning and ending. For example, if the recording software started 10 seconds before the tape started, that would be trimmed away. The same is true for the end. If we set a 2-hour recording window and the video only ran for 40 minutes, the excess is trimmed off. Depending on the quality of the video, we may determine slight adjustments are needed to give you the best quality available.

Reels are run on a device that takes a photograph of each frame on the reel and seeds them together to create a video. A 3 inch reel (that will play for just over 3 minutes) takes about 30 minutes to create.  5 inch reels take about two and a half hours each!  These are also run through editing after they are captured to make proper speed adjustments and apply filters to give the best quality picture available.  At this point, music is added if requested.  Unfortunately we do not have the equipment to capture the audio on 8mm film that had sound tracks.

Physical photos are scanned and turned into JPEG files.  Slides and Negatives are put in a machine that will magnify and color correct them if necessary and save them as a JPEG file.

Once the files are completed, they are added to the device of your choosing.

If DVD’s were chosen, they are created with custom menus and chapter intervals are added at appropriate points.  For example, if you had 10 8mm reels converted to DVD, each individual reel would be a chapter on the Disc.

When the order is complete, we arrange to get the final product and the source materials back to you.