This is one of most common questions we receive from customer bringing in materials to digitize. Along with "How much does it cost?", "How long does it take" is, of course, dependent on the size of the job.
With the holidays just around the corner (Christmas is only 10 weeks away, folks!) we are beginning to enter one of our busiest seasons. The primary factor this time of years is, of course, the fact that almost everything that comes in is being requested to be done in time for Christmas. Although our normal turnaround times are pretty fast, we can get backed up the closer that 12/25 date looms, however we have never faild to meet a deadline for processing Christmas work and often put in extra hours to make sure our customers have what they need when they need it.
Unlike many box stores or other businesses offering these same services, all transfer work is done right here on our premises, so there is no added delay by shipping across the country (or in some cases, halfway around the world), so we can get most projects started within a day or two and on average we can complete a project in under a week.
For extremely small or large jobs, time is equally affected. Many times a customer with, say, a single VHS tape to transfer to a DVD can have the project completed the same day. On the other end of the spectrum, a large batch of 2000 35mm slides could take 2 to 3 weeks to complete.
With videos, film and audio sources, everything has to run in real time. Since we have multiple systems set up for transfers from video tapes, many can be run simultaneously, thus we can complete dozens or more each day depending on their actual length.
Other source material, such as the aforementioned slides, movie film, or audio reels, for example, require more specialized equipment and hands-on processing. Our slide scanner, while automated, takes about 2 hours to run through 50 slides. With some additional color correction work, this means sometimes we can only get through a few hundred a day. Movie film is actually a fairly fast process even in situations where it appears there is a lot. Remember that even a 7" diameter 400' reel of 8mm film only runs about 25 minutes, so we can process many thousands of feet of film each day, even adding on extra time for color correction, DVD menu creation and disc burning. Likewise, a 7" reel of audio tape might only take about an hour to run both sides, but again there is also some noise reduction and post-processing involved that can add to the turnaround time.
All in all, we pride ourselves for getting the job done right as well as done quickly. Have any questions? Feel free to contact us any time.
Marc Vadeboncoeur is the owner of Goodheart Media Services, a professional video production company which also specializes in video, audio, film and photo transfers as well as disc and USB duplication. He can be reached via the company web site at www.goodheartmedia.com.