Service Pricing

Stack of VHS home video tapes ready for digital transfer at The Camera Shop in St. Cloud, MN

First steps. The family trip. Little League.

Video Tape Transfers

Somewhere in your home, there's probably a stack of old tapes holding footage nobody has watched in 20 years. First steps. Family vacations. Holiday mornings. Graduations. All of it recorded on formats that most TVs and computers can no longer play.

Digitized home video footage playing on a tablet after professional VHS transfer at The Camera Shop in St. Cloud, MN

If your tapes have been sitting in a closet or basement, now is the time to act before the recordings are gone for good.

Standard VHS cassette tape format accepted for digital transfer at The Camera Shop in St. Cloud, MN

Once your tapes are converted to digital files, your footage is easy to watch on any modern device — phone, laptop, tablet, or TV. Easily share with family members anywhere in the world.

VHS-C compact cassette tape format accepted for digital transfer at The Camera Shop in St. Cloud, MN

Additional copies are priced reasonably — making it easy to get one for every household in the family. Think of siblings, cousins, and grandchildren who need a copy.

The Camera Shop + The Print Refinery in St. Cloud, MN converts old home video tapes to digital — transferring your footage to USB or DVD so it's watchable again on today's devices and safe for the long haul. We work with VHS, VHS-C, Hi-8, Digital 8, Mini DV, Betamax, and international formats like PAL and SECAM. Drop your tapes off at our St. Cloud location or ship them to us, and our trained archiving staff will digitize them with care. Every original tape is returned to you when the job is done. The longer those tapes sit, the more they deteriorate. There really is no better time than now.

How it works:

Drop off your video tape(s) at our store, or ship them with a trackable carrier.
Choose USB drive (editable) and/or playable DVDs.
Your memorabilia is cared for by our trained archiving experts, who will treat your materials with the utmost care.
We'll ship back to you, or notify you to pick up in our store.
We return all original media to you after the process is complete.

*Video tapes with mold may be sent to an external lab for special processing.

Who else needs a copy?

The best way to share your renewed video and movie footage is by getting family members their very own copy. Additional copies are priced very reasonably. As you're embarking on your project, think of siblings, cousins, children and grandchildren who may appreciate a copy today (or when they're grown up).

Cracked and deteriorating magnetic tape coating on a damaged VHS tape — The Camera Shop St. Cloud, MN

When Tape Starts to Go, It Goes Fast.

What you're seeing here is the magnetic coating on a VHS tape that has begun to crack and flake away — and once that happens, the footage recorded on those sections is gone forever. Magnetic tape is far more fragile than it looks, and heat, humidity, and age can accelerate this kind of damage quickly.

Horizontal lines and signal interference visible during playback of a deteriorating VHS tape — The Camera Shop St. Cloud, MN

Every Play Could Be the Last Good One.

Those horizontal lines running through the picture are a classic sign of tape deterioration — the magnetic signal is breaking down and your VCR can no longer read it cleanly. This kind of playback damage often gets worse with each viewing, meaning every time you hit play, you may be shortening the life of what's left.

Formats Accepted:

VHS

VHS cassettes are 7.4 inches by 4 inches and 1 inch thick with half inch wide tape inside.

Compact VHS

VHS-C cassettes are 3.6 inches by 2.0 inches and 0.8 inches thick with the standard VHS half inch wide tape inside.

Hi-8 and Digital 8 compact video cassette formats accepted for digital transfer at The Camera Shop in St. Cloud, MN

Hi-8 & Digital 8

Compact video cassets are 3.6875 inches by 2.375 inches and 0.6 inches thick.

Mini DV

Using digital data, these Mini DV's are 2.6 inches by 1.92 inches 0.48 inches thick.

Betamax

Betamax was a home video cassette format developed by Sony in the mid-1970s as a competitor to VHS.

PAL

The encoding standard for VHS tapes used by most of Europe.

SECAM

The encoding standard for VHS tapes used by France.

We keep your treasures safe and local.

We never recommend shipping away family archives, treasured photos, and irreplaceable home movies. It's too risky. The Camera Shop + The Print Refinery has been professionally preserving memories with archiving and scanning services in the St. Cloud, Minnesota area for over 40 years.

COPYRIGHT NOTE – Our policy is to make every effort possible to protect the rights of professional photographers. Work that is clearly copyrighted will not be scanned without the written permission of the photographer/creator.

Number of Videotapes	Convert to USB	Convert to DVD
1	$40	$40
2+	$33 per tape	$40 per tape
Extras
Additional USB Drive	$16
Additional DVD Copy	$16
5 minutes of editing	$5
Repair of broken videotape	$20 - $35

Each order of one or more videotapes converted to USB includes the cost of one (1) USB drive for the entire order. The digital files for each tape in a single order will be delivered on one (1) USB drive unless more are requested & purchased. Additional USB copies should be requested when the order is submitted. Quantity changes after submission may cause order completion to be delayed.

Each order of one or more videotapes converted to DVD includes the cost of one (1) DVD for each videotape in that order. Each tape will be transferred to one (1) DVD unless more are requested & purchased. Additional DVD copies should be requested when the order is submitted. Quantity changes after submission may cause order completion to be delayed.

Custom editing requests include but are not limited to removal of TV recordings, splitting a videotape into multiple video files based upon scene changes, adding scene titles, or other custom edits requested. Custom editing is billable based on labor time of our editing staff; if a requested edit takes 15 minutes for our staff to complete, a $15 charge will be billed to that order.

Actual cost of repairing a broken videotape will vary based on the extent of damage and the time required to repair.

For more information, please contact us.