Play It Again Video Has Moved!

April 3, 2015 by

Spring is finally here in Newton, MA, and that means it’s time for new beginnings. We have made one big change here at Play It Again Video, and that is a move to a new location, about a mile away in Newton Center. Our new address is 1349 Centre St, Newton Center – come see us and check out the new place!

We spent several days packing up everything in the old location and carefully hand-moving all of the equipment and projects. We only hired movers for the heavy furniture – it wouldn’t be fair to our customers to hand off their special memories to someone else! Now, as we settle in to the new location, unpacking and setting up all of our equipment, we are seeing the magic trick of moving: somehow, when you move from a smaller space to a larger one, your stuff still expands to fill the larger room. Hmmm…

Video Transfer

We invite you to come visit and see the new location! We are up and running and ready to help you with your video transfer projects. Or just stop in to say hi!

Filed Under: News & Tidbits

Family Summer Photos – Tips for taking great pictures

July 10, 2014 by

Smartphone vacation photos
Zoom in on what counts
Every photo should have a focused center of attention. In a lot of photos these days, which are usually taken in the spur of the moment, the topic of the photo is off to a side or maybe just too small. Size and center make for a better photo and memory.

… but don’t forget the background
Once you have a center piece for the masterpiece, it is important to keep the location and vibe of the photo alive. Whether you are climbing down into deep dark caves and want to capture your families dazzled expressions or swimming in the ocean and see your kids having fun, it’s important to capture the scene of the experience.

Sometimes a little bit of blur is a good thing
You see famous artist paint and create their way with purposeful fuzz. Nothing is stopping you from doing the same with a photo. While this takes a a little knowledge of the camera you are using, which is minimal tops, it is worth the effort in how it can bring the photo into life and art.

Family Vacation Action Shot

Life isn’t a string of photos
Life doesn’t move at 30 frames per second like your favorite movies. It is fluid and alive, just like your photos should be. Don’t stop your kids or family from having fun at the park; instead, take moving photos of them. The photos will show a colorful array of emotions and vibrance.

When you don’t have a professional camera, smartphone!
There is nothing bad about smartphones or admitting that it is your only source of pictures. It’s perfectly acceptable, and actually pretty awesome, that you can literally have a camera in hand 100% of the time. In these instances filters are your friends. Just ask any friendly teenager to help you choose one.

Live in the now
Final advice, and this is good natured advice, don’t forget to participate and not just sit on the sidelines. Having someone else take photos will bring more variety to the photos and will only increase the power of the memories in the futures as you look at that photo album.

Digital photos are the way of the future and for those of you who haven’t yet adapted, now might be a good time. Hard copies of photos are a great way to keep them in plain sight but not a good storage method. They crinkle and tear. And if you leave them alone for long enough, then the moisture in the air will get to them. It’s time for those memories to enter the digital age where there is no risk of deteriorating quality.

It’s not difficult to find a photo scanning service in your area.

Need photos scanned or restored? Want to hear what others have to say?
Scan photos to a HD and share them with family.
Restore photos back to their original quality.
Watch testimonials from people all around Boston.

Filed Under: News & Tidbits, Photo Editing, Photo Scanning

Video Transfer Customer returns for 9th time

May 7, 2014 by

George is rich with memories. Stored in old home movies VHS tapes, 8mm film reels, photos, slides.

He’s been back to Play it Again Video in Newton MA, for the 9th time. “The richness of life is in the memories we have forgotten.” says Cesare Pavese, Italian poet and philosopher. And George has an abundance of precious memories.

If you are still hanging on to your old aging memory media, you probably don’t have the players anymore. Bring them into the digital age, watch and share those memories once again.

Old memory media that can still be digitized to DVDs or to computer files:
– VHS tapes, VHS-C, 8mm, miniDV tapes
– PAL/SECAM tapes (Foreign)
– 16mm, 8mm and Super 8 film reels – with or without sound
– Audio cassettes, Vinyl records, Reel-to-Reel audio
– Photo prints, 35mm slides

Call us for questions on other video or film formats.

Filed Under: News & Tidbits

VHS to Digital – How to get rid of old VHS tapes after transferring to DVD

April 12, 2013 by

Now that you’ve digitized your old tapes to either DVDs or computer files, I bet you are wondering what to do with those space consuming piles of VHS tapes. Many customers will agree that one of best features of the decision to finally transfer is that they finally can throw those bulky tapes out. However, before you throw them in the trash can, there are a few things to consider first.

Most importantly, double check the DVDs or computer files that replaced each tape. Most high quality transfer services perform quality checks when they transfer every tape, but it is important that you see for yourself that the DVDs actually work at home. The worst possible case would be for you to find out that one, or a few don’t work AFTER you tossed your VHS home movies.

It is also important that you create a backup of the DVD or hard drive if you decide to throw out the original VHS that it was transferred from. DVDs can be broken or scratched and hard drives can crash, so if the VHS has been discarded, you’ll have no way of viewing the material again unless you back it up to a different hard drive or to your computer.

Now that you are prepared to dispose of your old tapes, you have several options on how to do it:

1. Go through all your tapes and see if you have old rarities or classics. An example of this is Gone With the Wind or a Charlie Chaplin tape. Put these on eBay or the Amazon Marketplace. Although there isn’t a huge demand for these, you may find the occasional collector who may be seeking these out for one reason or another.

2. The next option is bringing your commercial or How-To tapes to your local thrift store or library. They may be interested in what you have due to a large amount of senior citizens who have held on to their VHS players and still seek old tapes.

3. Offer your tapes to Freecycle. There may be somebody out there that wants them.

4. At Recycle This, it has been suggested to make scarecrows with the fluttering black tape to scare birds out of your garden or yard. The plastic housing can be tossed in your recycling bin.

5. If nobody is interested in your tapes, contact Green Disk. This company specializes in disposing older, outdated electronics including VHS tapes. Pricing is just $6.95 for a 30 pound box (that’s a lot of tapes!)

The worst possible thing you can do is simply throwing them away and adding to the landfill. CDs, DVDs and VHS tapes can be toxic and harmful to the environment and the plastic casing of your tapes could take hundreds of years to decompose.

“A good planet is hard to find” – Motto from GreenDisk

Filed Under: News & Tidbits

VHS/VCR Tapes – 6 Bad Things That Can Happen

January 24, 2013 by

VHS/VCR tapes have passed their prime in the audio-video timeline. Are you still holding on to the nostalgia or just have been too busy to transfer your home videos over to DVD. After all, it isn’t like a VHS tape has an expiration date, correct?

Not Correct. VHS Tapes do have a shelf life. Here are six bad things that can happen to your vhs tapes.

VHS Tape mold1. Mold
Very few families would suspect that what looks like a piece of plastic could be a breeding ground for mold. Spots with white powder or dust could destroy your cherished memories and videos. A touch of mold powdering can be wiped off from VHS tapes, but if not caught soon enough it becomes heavy white confectioners-sugar-like coating on your magnetic tape ribbon. If that happens, you will not find a video transfer service lab that would be willing to risk their expensive equipment to run your tapes to convert them to DVD.

2. Sticking
Along with extreme temperature changes air quality can be a major factor in your VHS memories’ shelf lives! Humidity can be the kiss of death for your recorded wedding vows, causing the tape in VHS housing to stick together. Over the years, we have received a couple of hockey pucks that were once loose reel of tape.

3. Housing Cracks or Housing Mechanism Jams
If you had children or were a young child in the VHS era, you might remember the beating your old VHS tapes have taken over the years. They have been dropped, thrown, and stepped on – ok, your family home videos probably didn’t receive the same treatment as the kids’ favorite Disney movies. Still, simply watching, rewatching, and rewinding puts wear and tear on the housing case of your VHS tapes. It’s not indestructible. A cracked case could jam the housing mechanism, causing it to jam in the player.

4. Tape Warping
Extreme temperature changes over time can cause serious damage and warping to the magnetic ribbon in the video tapes. Warping causes image disruption and static noise. Beyond a point, the tape ribbon is too warped to run smoothly in the tape player.

5. Tape Detaches from Housing
Tapes become fragile with time. Over the years, the multiple rewinding takes a toll on the tape and its housing case! There is a chance that the tape could detach from the housing making it impossible to rewind and watch your favorite family memories and firsts. This one is actually easily reparable. Most video transfer lab has knowledgeable technician that has the fine tools to unscrew the housing, re-attach the tape the the mechanism and screw it back again. Once repaired, transfer it immediately.

6. Shredded or Torn Tape Ribbon

VCR tapes are fragile and with temperature changes, humidity, and wear and tear the tape can tear. Needless to say, once your video tape is torn it is beyond the point of repair and your recorded memories have “gone with the wind”.

Even though your VHS has no expiration date printed on it, you can see how it definitely has a shelf life. Your cherished memories could be lost due to a number of reasons. So what is that shelf life? 10 years? 15 years? VHS tapes stopped being used in the 90s. Time flies when you are not watching it. This is the year 2013, which means your tapes are likely to be 15-20 years old. And the best time to transfer your VHS/VCR tapes to DVD or to other digital format? Yesterday. Don’t wait any longer, your kids and their kids are counting on you to safe their family home movies.

Filed Under: News & Tidbits
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