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SimplyDV: Your Digital Video Solution!

Image of Videocassette, DVD and price info SimplyDV Home Video Price GBP18

Milton Keynes-based SimplyDV provides high-quality video-to-DVD transfers for home users, plus analogue videotape digitising and encoding to industry-standard professional digital video file formats for editing and archiving.

We can digitise the following analogue and digital home video or professional grade videotape formats to DVD, video file, hard disc or USB stick:

  • VHS, VHS-C and S-VHS video cassettes, large and small cassettes
  • Betamax (PAL European Standard) video-cassettes
  • U-Matic 3/4″ Low Band, High Band (BVU) and High Band SP (BVU-SP)
  • Video-8, Hi-8 and Digital-8mm video-cassettes
  • DV, MiniDV, DVCAM and DVCPRO
  • Betacam and Betacam-SP (Beta-SP) in PAL and NTSC
  • Digital Betacam (DigiBeta), Betacam-SX (Beta-SX) and MPEG-IMX in PAL and NTSC
  • NTSC and SECAM Lowband U-Matic Standards Conversion and Digitisation
  • NTSC and SECAM VHS Standards Conversion and Digitisation (VHS-C, VHS Full Size cassettes)

PRICE OF HOME VIDEO TO DVD TRANSFERS:
Home video format (VHS, S-VHS, Video-8/Hi-8, MiniDV, Betamax) transfers to DVD starting from £18.00 (£15.00 + VAT)  per tape. See Price List.

PRICE OF HOME VIDEO TO MPEG-4 FILE TRANSFERS:
Home video format (VHS, S-VHS, Video-8/Hi-8, MiniDV, Betamax) transfers to MPEG-4/H.264 starting from £15.00 (£12.50 + VAT)  for the first 60 mins and then £6.00 (£5.00 + VAT) per hour thereafter up to a MAXIMUM of 3 HOURS (180 minutes). A three-hour tape converted to MPEG-4/H.264 will therefore cost you £27.00 incl VAT. PLEASE NOTE: This excludes the cost of the storage media – hard disc drive, USB stick, SD card etc – onto which files will be written.

PRICE OF PRO FORMAT TRANSFERS TO FILE OR DVD:
Professional format 4:3 SD transfers to ProRes, 10-bit/8-bit Quicktime and MPEG-4/H.264 from £24.00 (£20.00 + VAT) per tape. See Price List. PLEASE NOTE: Media  (Hard Disc Drive or USB Flash Drive) is subject to separate quotation. Please ask for information.

Professional grade Blackmagic Design Teranex 2D digital processing and up-res to 720p, 1080i or 1080p INCLUDED!

We’ll take regular standard definition (SD) video clips from DigiBeta, Beta-SP, DVCAM, DVCPro and even MiniDV and upscale (up-res) them to either 1080p, 1080i or 720p specification files for archive storage or editing in Final Cut Pro, Avid Media Composer or Adobe Premiere. UPSCALING FROM SD 4:3 TO HD 14:9 OR 16:9 NOW INCLUDED AT NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE.

Image of the front panel of our Teranex 2D Digital Video Processor by Blackmagic Design.

Blackmagic Teranex 2D Digital Video Processor

The Teranex 2D enables us to convert, in real time, a 4:3 ratio standard definition PAL videotape to a a widescreen format – eg: 1920 x 1080 HD – and output as Quicktime ProRes422 [HQ], 10-bit or 8-bit uncompressed Quicktime, DPX sequence or even high bitrate MPEG-4/H.264 files at 1080 (50p, 25p or 50i) spec for editing and digital preservation. Alternatively, we can create hardware-encoded MPEG-4/H.264 files for you in addition to a range of popular file types. We can also standards convert from PAL to NTSC and vice versa. The Teranex is widely regarded as being the best in its class for video format conversion – and is widely specified by broadcasters, production companies and video/film libraries the world over.

Need to know more? Ask Colin Barrett via the Contact page.

Half-inch helical scan reel-to-reel videotape baking and transfer to disc and file

We have three Sony black-and-white VTRs (video tape recorders) capable of reproducing 1960s “CV” and early 1970s “AV” format 1/2″ monochrome (B&W) videotape reels. We are receiving an increasing volume of Sony V-60, V-60H, V-32, V-32H, V-62 and V-62H videotape reels for digitising, in addition to tapes of the Scotch and Ampex formulations.

Here’s a short video introducing our (then) new Sony CV-2100ACE reel-to-reel video corder which dates from 1968 and not 1970 as stated in the titles:

All Sony, and some Scotch, video tapes will suffer from Sticky Shed Syndrome and will need baking for either a few hours or a few days (depending on condition). We routinely bake half-inch CV and AV EIAJ helical videotapes in order to render them playable.

PRICE OF HALF-INCH REEL-TO-REEL VIDEO TAPE TRANSFERS:
Combined price for baking and transferring to editable file or DVD: £60.00 incl VAT per tape. Price of transfer only: £36.00 incl VAT per tape. Baking only: £36.00 incl VAT per tape.

For more information on half-inch helical reel-to-reel video transfers see here.

Interested? Ask Colin Barrett via the Contact page.