My husband and I bought our first video camera during my first pregnancy 19 years ago. We bought an 8mm camera, and took video frequently when our children were young. Then the camera broke and technology changed and everything went digital. As a result we have a huge box of 8mm video tapes that we never even look at. In fact my 15 year old daughter didn’t even realize we had video footage from when she was a baby, so I doubt we have watched one of those videos in at least 10 years!
Now it is possible to get those old video tapes and slides transferred to DVD. YesVideo provides a way to bring video and photo memories into the digital age. They can take your video tapes, reel to reel tapes, old home movies, slides and photographs and transfer them to DVD so you can enjoy them for years to come.
I had the chance to use YesVideo’s services to transfer three of my old 8mm video tapes to DVD. It was a very simple process, I placed an order online and then mailed my videotapes to YesVideo. About 10 days later I received 3 DVDs in the mail, and my 8mm tapes back as well.
The DVDS are everything I hoped they would be! My children and I enjoyed watching them on our TV and our computer, and it is fun to see the children when they were so small. Now that they are teenagers it is hard to even remember how cute they were as babies! I enjoyed watching scenes I had totally forgotten about, like my girls playing with the big blue bouquet of balloons after their little brother was born. 
My DVDs are each about 2 hours long and have 54 chapters, so it is easy to skip around and find what you are looking for, which of course is not possible at all with video tapes. The DVDs also include 3 one-minute music video highlights that have a montage of scenes from the DVD. These are a nice bonus, and are fun to watch. When you order online you get to pick the title, theme and background music that will be on the DVD. I picked 3 different themes, Standard, Baby and Children, so all the boxes have different art.
I would transfer my boyfriend’s band concerts
I’d love to transfer the vhs tapes we have of myself as a kid.
monorox(at)gmail(dot)com
my sons graduation and others sons baseball game. debra.pauley63@gmail.com
I have mini dvs of my wedding i need transfered!
The first two years of my daughters life!
I have old family videos I would like to transfer. 🙂 Thank you.
This is great. I have about 6 VHS movies I would love to gift my parents by turning them into DVD, b ut have not been able to afford it! erinnsluka@gmail.com
I’d transfer slides that we took over the 30 years my husband was in the Army.
I have some old family videos on vhs , of some of my family members who have passed on, that I would love to transfer over to DVD.
cweller75@gmail.com
Home movies from when I was little (1960’s) I would love to be able to see those again!
Connie G
CGruning at aol(dot)com
I have some pictures from a Cancun trip 12 years ago that I have on 3 1/2″ discs, I would love to send in those!
Birthday parties
We transferred all of our old 8mm home films to DVD using Yes Video though Costco. We were very excited to get them back and had them make copies for everyone in my family. What a disappointment! We got them back and found that they put them in the wrong order that I had labeled them, plus they took them off the old reels and respliced them out of order. Not only that, but the films were jumpy, like when the tracking is off from a VHS tape. I called their customer service and they said that’s a common occurence and can be corrected by adjusting the projector. OK, then why didn’t they do that in the first place? I had them redo the DVD’s, and when I got them back most of the jumping was corrected, however, I noticed that the total length on the DVD’s differed substancially from the originals (we had 3 separate DVD’s made). Looking into this further, we noticed that there were films and parts of films on the original copy that weren’t on the redo and visa-versa. THEY WEREN’T PUTTING ALL OF OUR FILMS ONTO THE DVD! Also, one of the DVD’s had a different ratio on it causing the film to look zoomed in and cropped. I again contacted their customer service and returned the DVD’s for another redo. The third time I got them back they finally got all the films onto the DVD, but the jumping was back on one of them and another still had the wrong picture ratio. This time when I called them they told me this was the best they could do and they would not correct it. So,after 7 months, not only is this company completely irresponsible and incompetent, but they settle for imperfection with your precious home videos. Yes Video? More like, No Video!
I agree with you – Yes Video did not transfer all given to them – the same with me.
This review is on Yes Video services through Ritz Camera, Jacksonville. Ritz is a great company however Yes Video was the company transferring my 5 reels of 8 mm old films I inherited from my late Dad.
I was charged almost $70 for the transfer (or supposed transfer) of the 5 reels plus two DVDs.
I got the finished product in 2 1/2 weeks and it was a mess. They did splice the 5 reels into one reel and missed one whole reel and mixed my prom film with a vacation film and then flipped back to the home film and then vacation film and then prom film.
What a mess…..never use Yes Video – it is more like No Video….no quality or consistency and care given.
I saw the advertisement for Yesvideo in a Costco mailer and thought ‘what a good idea’: I could finally transfer my old 8mm films from the 60s (which had all only been viewed once, after I’d originally spliced them together), to digital format. Then I saw the part of the advertisement titled “What we won’t do” (provide digital files of the material (DV video) – which aren’t the DVD type of file but they need to make them anyway in order to make the final DVDs, and which have about 25% of the original pixel data in them – not noticeable unless you’re interested in quality reproduction) and decided to send in one test reel composed of snippets of random scenes that didn’t really fit in with anything else in my collection – just to see what the service actually provided in an end-product.
So here’s what I got. As advertised, I got two DVDs and the ability to view their contents free of charge for a period of 90 days from the time of purchase. That part is all well and good. Here’s the rub (which may not bother some people who don’t care about quality – and there are many, probably most people don’t actually care as long as it’s easy): The 8mm film, which is taken at 24 frames per second, is transferred to a medium (DVD) which plays them at nearly 30 frames per second (29.97 fps to be exact). The problem with doing that is that any 8mm film made with the standard frame rate for 8mm film will appear like the Keystone Cops zooming around at an unrealistic rate. If you’ve failed to notice this effect, you’re their kind of customer.
I E-mailed them and asked if there was any way they could arrange for me to either download the original DV files or to make them available on DVDs – all for a fee of some sort, of course – I wouldn’t expect this service to be free. What I discovered is that this company isn’t interested in innovation or serving the customer. You take, or don’t take, what they do and that’s the end of the issue as far as they’re concerned.
They were very courteous but not at all knowledgeable in their responses, effectively repeating the party line that they offer no option for purchasing the original DV files, which they already have on their system but won’t sell to the purchaser of their product.
My resort is to begin looking around for a service which caters to anyone interested in retaining as much of the original film information as possible. Does Yesvideo save your memories? Yes, but only 25% of them and those 25% are at the wrong frame rate.
Oh yes – with respect to VHS to DVD conversion. I bought a Toshiba (I’m sure other brands do a respectable job as well) VHS to DVD (also dubs DVD to VHS but who would want to?) dual deck for under $155.00 and it works great. Other dual VHS to DVD decks sell for as little as $99.00 but I wouldn’t go with the cheapest model if you’re going to depend on it to make DVDs for you. Within a week I’ve converted 24 vhs tapes to DVDs and the quality is as good as it gets. The operation of the deck is also simple – dubbing is a matter of pressing the ‘dubbing’ button either on the front panel or on the full function remote. The time it takes to dub a tape to disc is the time it takes to play the tape.
I’d recommend buying one of these for anyone who has more than five VHS tapes to copy because, after five converted tapes, you’ve paid for the deck at the prices Yesvideo charges – and you’re in control of what you copy.
Of course you need to buy a spindle of blank DVD-R discs. I have a printer which prints directly on the printable DVD blanks so that the result looks professional (don’t skimp on the quality of the DVD blanks). Yesvideo has no indication of what’s on the discs other than the title you submit when you place your order and their logo. I take screenshots of indicative scenes and print them on the disc along with text so you know immediately what the subject matter is. I also buy 200 SLIM Black CD Jewel Cases at 0.095 cents per piece (200 Jewel cases for $19.00) to store and protect my final product.
There are a few options available on my deck which I found very useful. One is that you can select the quality of the recording. I chose the highest quality which has the trade-off of only allowing one hour (about 63 minutes) of Video per disc but that includes the up-conversion of your VHS data to 1080p. Granted, the original VHS tape may not contain enough data to make this use worthwhile but my philosophy is to preserve every shred of data that’s available since that’s the point of the whole exercise.
Another option is that you can connect ANY video source – like, for instance, your DV video camera and making DVDs from tapes or SD/SDHC cards or even from direct broadcast if your TV has video and audio out ports. There’s really no limit to what you can record on a DVD with these machines. They’re a much better, more versatile option than sending your tapes to be processed at a one-size-fits-all assembly line.