When you’re digitizing a large number of videos, you’ll need to choose an appropriate format for the digital files.  Most video formats use compression, which reduces the data (and consumes less space on your storage media). Without compression, a single...

With help from Datarecovery.com, an award-winning filmmaker and television producer has digitized some of his earliest work — including a rare 1979 interview with Chris Frantz, then-drummer for the Talking Heads. Greg Crutcher has had a storied career, serving as...

If you’re converting Betacam cassettes to digital formats, you may need to remove audio, particularly if you’re working with broadcast media with musical cues or sound effects.  Here’s an overview of the audio channels of different BetaCam formats:Standard Betacam...

Today, the vast majority of broadcast footage is shot with digital equipment — but that’s a relatively recent development.  For decades, analog formats like Betacam and U-Matic were standard, and even after the introduction of Digital Betacam (DigiBeta), many broadcasters...

Your video archives need to be accessible to be useful. If your Betacam cassettes are sitting in storage, they’re not practically accessible — and locating footage from a single cassette might be an insurmountable task. Converting from obsolete formats such...

If your organization needs to digitize a large quantity of videos or audio tapes, you’ll need to consider the challenges of at-scale content management.  In many cases, content management is the most labor-intensive (and expensive) component of video digitization. It’s...

Sony’s ¾” U-matic cassette format was an industry standard for broadcast and post-production professionals through the 1970s and 1980s. Like all analog formats, U-matic had serious limitations — some U-matic decks were prone to technical issues that resulted in tape...

For nearly three decades, Beta SP was the standard for broadcasting and professional video archival work. With a low cost per cassette and outstanding quality compared to competing formats, Beta SP was one of the most successful (and profitable) analog...

The Betacam SP format has a horizontal resolution of 340 lines. This was an improvement over the original Betacam format, which had a resolution of 300 lines. To accomplish this improvement, Betacam SP used metal-formulated tape, as opposed to its...

U-matic tapes can be converted to digital video formats, including formats compliant with standards like Sony D-1.  However, due to the age of the U-matic medium, we strongly recommend working with professional video technicians to ensure the highest quality output....