Video Restoration Services in Hopkinton, MA

We are continually upgrading equipment, materials, and procedures to accommodate our customers and salvage footage to the highest quality possible. Our work is essential because we restore the information of the past, not only for families who have experienced damaged home video, but also:

• Education Institutions
• Museums
• Schools
• Universities
• Government Agencies
• Libraries
• Law Enforcement
• Legal Professionals
• Videographers

What Is Archive Retrieval?

Many institutions have libraries or archives of recorded magnetic media such as reel-to-reel tapes, cassettes, and other obsolete formats of video recordings. These types of recording mediums tend to deteriorate over time.

The secondary problem is that as technology progresses, the hardware that produced this information becomes obsolete, and the material recorded becomes difficult--if not impossible--to reproduce in-house.

Audio/Video Tape Conditions

Even under optimal storage conditions, magnetic media has a shelf life measured by just a decade or two, at most. This length of time is where video recovery starts to become a consideration.

Audio and videotapes consist of an acetate, polyester or Mylar base coated with an oxide, sealed and covered with a lubricant to help minimize friction through the tape path. Typically, the lubricant either evaporates or undergoes a chemical change, rendering it useless. This change may cause an otherwise good tape to come to a complete halt in the machine due to friction when you attempt playback.

Once the lubricant is gone, as the tape passes through the machine, the oxide that contains the recorded information begins to flake off. Valuable information gets lost, and the tape heads become clogged.

Depending on the composition of the substrate and the binder (the glue that holds the oxide to the base), the tape may develop clear spots where oxide no longer exists. This absence may cause the machine to shut down and recorded material to get lost. If the substrate becomes brittle, it may be too delicate to make the bends necessary to complete threading in the machine and result in disintegration.