Question 1

How does this work?

Accepted Answer

Fill out the Request Quote form on our website or contact us by phone, instant message, or email to tell us what you would like done. We will email a quote with pricing for you to approve.
Ship your audio/video media to TapedMemories at 7683 SE 27th St, #270, Mercer Island, WA 98040. For the Seattle area, you can drop off your media on Mercer Island 7 days a week or contact us about the option of scheduling a media pick up at your home or office.
If ordering custom video editing or a photo slideshow, we provide you a log sheet to fill out that describes the music, photos, titles and text you would like on your custom video or family DVD slideshow.
Orders over $200 require a 25% deposit.  
We will email or text you once we receive your media and confirm what was received.
We contact you during the process with the progress of your order, any questions, and the expected delivery date.
The finished media files are uploaded to a private folder in your name on the Google Drive cloud service for 60 days and you will receive a notification on how to download them. You will not require a Google account or Gmail account to access and download the files on the Google Drive folder. 
You will receiving an online invoice that can be payed online or over the phone.
Your original audio/video media will be shipped back along with any physical storage media you ordered such as USB flash drives, CDs, or DVDs.

Question 2

I'm in the Seattle area. Can I drop off my tapes somewhere rather than mailing them?

Accepted Answer

Yes. We have arranged with The UPS Store in downtown Mercer Island to accept drop offs from our customers and they are open 7 days a week. Weekday hours are 7:30am to 5:30pm, Saturday from 9am to 5pm and Sunday 10am to 4pm. The media should be in a box or package that is sealed but does not need to be packed for shipping. Write the number "270" on the box or package along with your Estimate Number and include your name and email address in the box. TapedMemories staff will pick up your media box from The UPS Store.

Question 3

I have a VHS tape with a broken tape and a cracked VHS housing. Can you fix the tape in order to transfer my home movie?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we can repair broken tapes and, if needed, move your tape spools to a new cassette housing in order to transfer the recording. Price is $29.95 for the repair.

Question 4

I digitized my videotapes a few years ago but some of them are pretty grainy looking.  Is there anything that can improve these?

Accepted Answer

Yes. With our Gold Service, we use advanced noise filtering software tools to remove noise dots and greatly improve the sharpening of faces and other objects in the video. We'll also adjust the color vibrancy/saturation, contrast, brightness and exposure to improve overly dark scenes and footage that is too bright. Finally, we'll use software tools to clean up your video soundtrack and remove tape hiss, background noises and master the final audio track with an equalizer in order to enhance the speech and/or music. We've also added a new AI Upscaling and Denoising software treatment that upscales standard definition videotape files from 720 x 480 resolution to high definition 1440 x 960 resolution while making the video image much sharper and clearer.

Question 5

What file formats do you provide for vinyl record transfers?

Accepted Answer

We transfer 33, 45 and 78 vinyl records to both WAV and MP3 files. We also provide transfers of 78 rpm shellac records that utilizes a special cartridge for the wider grooves on shellac records. The WAV files are large sized, non-compressed (lossless) files for archiving. The 320kbps MP3 files are used for every day listening. Smaller sized MP3 files and other formats such as AAC, AIF, FLAC and OGG are available.

Question 6

What is the difference between Standard Service and Gold Service?

Accepted Answer

Gold Service includes post-processing filtering and manual software enhancements on audio, film, photo and video transfers. Standard Service includes no manual touch-ups.
 
For video tapes, Gold Service includes time based correction, dynamic noise reduction, blank space removal, frame cropping, manual adjustments to color, brightness, contrast and exposure, audio enhancement and noise filtering, video noise reduction, and titles at the beginning and end of the video.
 
With 8mm and Super 8 films, Gold Service includes digital noise reduction filtering using Neat Video software, manual adjustments to color, brightness, contrast and exposure and titles at the beginning and end of video. Music of your choice can also be added to these silent film videos.
 
For audio media, Gold Service includes audio software enhancements using Audio Cleaning Lab software with manual pop/click filtering on vinyl and hiss removal with audio software enhancements on cassettes.  
 
Gold Service on photo scans receives cropping, manual color correction and manual noise reduction filtering using the acclaimed Neat Image software.

Question 7

Where is my media transferred?

Accepted Answer

Unlike the big box retailers and drug store chains that send your media to 3rd parties, usually in Asia, all work at TapedMemories is performed in the Seattle metro area. We do not outsource any of our work.

Question 8

What rules or policies do you have for privacy?

Accepted Answer

Besides college backgrounds in film studies and video editing, our staff has extensive cybersecurity experience, so we take privacy very seriously. No video, film, photographic or audio materials received or any digitized files of those materials leave our studio. No customer material is ever used for social media posting or advertising. Private videos (i.e. bachelor and bachelorette parties, child birth, Las Vegas weekends) are confidential. However, no media with pornography or criminal activity is accepted.

Question 9

I have photos in an album that are difficult to remove because of age. Can this photo album be scanned?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we can scan photos in the album but the process is more labor intensive and priced accordingly. We'll scan the photos on each page and then digitally crop each photo so you have a separate photo file for each picture.

Question 10

What type of file formats do you provide with the transfers?

Accepted Answer

For consumer videos and 8mm/Super 8 films, we provide QuickTime Movie format files (.mov). MPEG-4 (.mp4) and other formats can be supplied upon request.
 
For professional video formats, we can provide ProRes, AVI, MPEG-2, H.265, MKV, M2TS and most other formats upon request.
 
Audio files are provided in uncompressed WAV and 320kbps MP3 files.
 
Photo files are provided in uncompressed TIFF or high quality JPEG file formats.
 
For archiving purposes and any future editing you may want to do, we can provide uncompressed, lossless versions of your photo, video and film transfer files. These larger, uncompressed files can be included with the smaller digital files that you will use for listening or playing your media. The compressed file formats are for convenient playback on TVs, laptops, tablets and streaming devices. The compressed versions of all digitized media are stored on Google Drive for 60 days at no charge for viewing, downloading and sharing with others.

Question 11

How are the converted files delivered? I no longer own a DVD player.

Accepted Answer

Most clients want their digitized media provided on a USB flash drive. We also upload your digitized files to a private folder on the Google Drive cloud service where you can view, download and share the digital files with colleagues, friends and family. This service is free for 60 days. You will not need a Google account or Gmail account to access your files. Files can also be provided on a USB portable hard drive or DVD. DVD burning is $18 for a 4.7gb disk and includes a custom label and a DVD menu system. Typically, about 2 hours of home movies will fit on one DVD at the Standard Quality setting.

Question 12

How much are Extended Play recording mode VHS tapes to digitize?

Accepted Answer

We provide VHS and other videotape format transfers for recordings up to 2 hours in length that covers Standard Play (SP) mode recordings. On 120-minute VHS tapes, Long Play (LP) mode is 4 hours and Extended Play (EP) or Super Long Play (SLP) recordings can be 8 hours. We charge $8 per half-hour for each additional 30 minutes of transferred recording over 2 hours. So a 4-hour EP tape would be $52 before discounts.

Question 13

I don't know what recordings are on my tapes since I no longer have a camcorder or VCR to play them.  How do I make sure I don't pay for a transfer of a "Seinfeld" episode?"

Accepted Answer

We can help. With our standard service, we'll digitize the initial 5-7 minutes of the recording. For blank tapes or TV show content, we'll mark the tape and move on to your next tape. Blank and TV show recording tapes are a $5 charge. For a more comprehensive search, we will scan through your entire tape for $10 to look for home video content. You will be informed which tapes have home videos and which tapes are TV show recordings. We do not rent or offer equipment for you to view your tapes. Tapes often have a mix of TV shows and valuable home videos. In which case, we'll transfer only the home videos unless you specify otherwise.

Question 14

I have a VHS tape with some type of white powder on the tape spools. Can you transfer this recording?

Accepted Answer

No. Tapes that look like they have powered sugar on the tape spools have mold which can damage not only the tape but also any VCR that plays that tape. Breathing in these mold spores can cause serious health issues. We can recommend specialists who provide mold and fungus removal from videotapes.

Question 15

My organization has video recordings made on Betacam SP and DVCAM formats. Do you transfer professional format tapes?

Accepted Answer

Yes. We work with corporations, ad agencies and non-profits to digitize historical footage on a variety of formats. We transfer Betacam, Betacam SP, Betacam SX, Digital Betacam (DigiBeta), HDV, DVCAM and full-sized DV tapes. Digital video files can be provided in ProRes, MPEG-2, AVI, H.265, MKV, M2TS or just about any video format upon request. We provide 60 days of free Google Drive storage of a compressed version of your videos (MOV or MP4) so colleagues can view, download and share the digitized media with others.

Question 16

My video recordings have shots of the ground and other footage I don't want.  What's the price to remove these scenes?

Accepted Answer

Our video editing service is based on 30 minute billing increments. Clipping out unwanted footage is fairly quick work if we know what sections you want removed. We suggest having the tape digitized and then using a video player on your iPad, laptop or desktop to choose the footage sections you want deleted by marking the start/stop times with your video player clock. We provide a log sheet that lets you mark down sections to be edited. Besides deleting unwanted scenes, we can adjust the color and exposure and add titles to the beginning and end of the movie.

Question 17

I have audio cassette tapes with family history stories but the volume is not very high and there is background noise.  What can be done for these?

Accepted Answer

We'll digitize your tapes on our audiophile tape decks and then use the highly-acclaimed Audio Cleaning Lab software that removes a wide variety of audio issues. The De-Click module automatically identifies and removes clicks, pops and digital impulse noise. The De-clip module repairs both digital and analog clipping artifacts and reduces distortion. The De-hum module automatically identifies the fundamental frequency of unwanted humming and removes it from your audio, ensuring you get clean sound without electric noise. And Voice De-Noise reduces unwanted background noise on vocal recordings. During final mastering of your recording, we'll use a graphic equalizer to complement the type of recording (speech, jazz, R&B, classical, etc.).

Question 18

Do you digitize open reel audio tapes?

Accepted Answer

No, we do not. We support all 3 versions of compact audio cassettes (standard, mini and micro sizes) as well as Sony MiniDisc but have not seen enough demand for reel-to-reel tape transfers to offer that service.

Question 19

I have old film negatives from one of those small spy cameras from the 1960's. Can you scan these film strips?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we can scan the Minox spy camera film negatives. Because of the small size of the frame on Minox film and other small formats like 110, Kodak disc camera and View-Master reels, we recommend at least a 3200 dpi resolution scan.

Question 20

What is the resolution of your photo scans?

Accepted Answer

For print photos, the scanning resolution is 600 dots per inch (dpi) optical resolution. Film slides and negatives are scanned at 2400, 3200 or 4800 dpi. Format options are JPEG and TIFF. If you plan on archiving scans or printing in sizes 8x10 or larger, we recommend scans at 3200 or 4800 dpi.

Question 21

How long is the turnaround to get my digitized files?

Accepted Answer

Typical turnaround is 3-4 weeks after receipt of the media. Delivery times increase during certain times of the year prior to Mother's Day and the holiday period from Nov 20th to Dec 23rd. We offer a Rush Delivery service option.

Question 22

Do you charge for blank videotapes or tapes with TV show recordings?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we charge $5 to cover costs for inspecting the tape, labeling the tape with your name and order number and then digitizing the beginning portion of the blank tape or the non-home video recording (TV show, TV sports, etc).

How does this work?

I'm in the Seattle area. Can I drop off my tapes somewhere rather than mailing them?

I have a VHS tape with a broken tape and a cracked VHS housing. Can you fix the tape in order to transfer my home movie?

I digitized my videotapes a few years ago but some of them are pretty grainy looking. Is there anything that can improve these?

What file formats do you provide for vinyl record transfers?

What is the difference between Standard Service and Gold Service?