Your mASTER TAPES are in the right hands

At Digitize Media Services we offer range of services for the professional sector of the industry.

VIDEO & AUDIO TRANSFERS

We offer broadcast-quality 10-bit YUV digitizing / capture of all Sony Betacam variants (Betacam, Betacam SP, Betacam SX, MPEG IMX, Digital Betacam) in both 525 NTSC and 625 PAL, using Blackmagic Design capture systems, all via SDI.

Whether you need just a 5-minute clip from an archive Beta-SP tape, or an entire tape library/archive to be digitized, we can help!

In addition to Betacam tapes, we offer tape capture from a variety of other formats, including DVCAM, Professional DV, HDV, 3/4” U-matic / U-matic SP, VHS & S-VHS.

We also offer high quality video transfers (and up-conversion to HD) from DVD, as well as video capture from Blu Ray discs and some of the more obscure formats such as Laserdisc and DVD-RAM recordings.

All our VTRs and audio tape decks are professionally maintained, with low head hours.

DVD & BLU-RAY: DESIGN, COMPRESSION, & AUTHORING

From the simplest corporate video, to the most feature-rich product for retail release, with almost 20 years’ experience authoring discs for the world’s leading studios such as Paramount, Universal, Sony & HBO, we have the knowledge & skill to create the highest quality product with extremely competitive pricing. With professional-grade tools such as Cinemacraft video encoding and Scenarist authoring workstations, you can be assured of the highest quality discs with the player-compatibility that only Scenarist can offer.

DVD RE-AUTHORING

DVD re-authoring is a cost-effective method of updating your previously-released DVD titles. We can take almost any DVD-Video disc, convert it back to its original video, audio & graphics assets along with the original authoring code, and make any updates you require. For example, updating logos & trailers, changing region codes, adding bonus features or new audio or subtitle language streams. This can then be output to brand new DDP mastering files for replication.

REPAIR OF BROKEN OR UN-PLAYABLE CASSETTES

It’s a fact of life that tapes can get damaged, especially when they get “eaten” by old VTRs, or over time the chemical binder/back-coating compound used in the tape manufacturing process can deteriorate, leading to what’s now known as “sticky shed syndrome”. This generally affects open-reel audio tape and older videocassettes such as 3/4” U-Matic, but recently it’s been found to affect certain brands of VHS tape too, and will likely affect older Betacam tapes also. Brands affected are usually those from US tape manufacturers, such as Scotch and Ampex, but occasionally it occurs with Japanese & German-made tapes too. Using a patented technique developed by Ampex, of a gentle low-temperature “baking” of the tape for several hours, we’ve successfully rescued many old (and otherwise “unplayable”) archive tapes. It’s a temporary fix, but lasts long-enough for us to be able to capture the contents of the tape to a digital format. With physically damaged videotape, the damaged section is generally un-recoverable, but we are able to splice the broken ends together to capture as much footage as possible from the tape.