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  #1  
04-08-2010, 08:25 AM
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kpmedia kpmedia is offline
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This week's issue was found on the site of Digital Memories of Texas (Humble, Texas) at http://www.dmoftexas.com/services_Video.html

Screen capture from 4/8/2010


Our analysis and response:
On this very site, there is an entire forum dedicated to the topic of improving video: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/foru...mprove-17.html
Along with several how-to guides: http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/vid...ex-restore.htm
One of our contributors (lordsmurf), helped create this forum several years ago: http://forum.videohelp.com/forums/41-Restoration

Videos can most definitely be improved, corrected, filtered and restored. While results will always vary, and can be heavily tied to the quality of the input, to say it "cannot be corrected" is a myth. At best, it's a reflection of your own limitations, and not the limitations of digital video processing in general. As a response to the slogan of this company, I would imagine it's hard to "unlock memories" when you don't seem to have the key.

About these pages:
Remember that these posts are made for consumer awareness of misinformation, myth, propaganda or other questionable information/data that has appeared on sites (often for video conversion services) that we've seen online. Sites that are found to have misinformation, myth or propaganda will be listed in our Video Service Hall of Shame.

Thanks.

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Last edited by kpmedia; 04-18-2010 at 08:42 PM.
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  #2  
04-18-2010, 07:58 PM
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A response was submitted by email!
  • First, I'll post the full version,
  • Then I'll break it up and respond to it piece by piece.

Quote:
Not sure if you will consider this 'venom' or not, but I know the person behind Digital Memories of Texas personally. He mentioned to me that your site was pretty rough on what he has to offer. Just as an FYI, I have visited your site in the past when considering trying to convert VHS tapes myself, but decided it was not for me. I searched the web and visited many sites, including yours that offered this service. I settled on Digital Memories as they fit my needs. At first review, your site portrays dedicated and professional people, however when you cut down someone else's services, I don't see professionalism. For me, a professional would not cut down the competition to encourage using their services, but to point out what I can offer that the competition can't. My feelings are that in the end, I went with the proper provider.
Here's my point-by-point response:

Quote:
I know the person behind Digital Memories of Texas personally. He mentioned to me that your site was pretty rough on what he has to offer
It's always nice to have friends that are willing to "have your back", but it's also good to have friends that can give you solid advice. Rather than blindly take the side of a friend, read what was said here. Your friend is misleading the customer base out there, telling them that video cannot be fixed, and that it will only look as good as the tape. This is factually incorrect information, he's spreading misinformation.

At most, his statement of "can not be corrected" is a limitation of his own skills, knowledge or equipment -- it's a limitation of his service. However, it's being presented as if restoring video is not possible.

Quote:
however when you cut down someone else's services, I don't see professionalism
Professionalism is not defined as somebody that is always nice, always positive or always kind to others. That's a corruption of the term "professionalism", as brought about by the "political correctness" age. Consider the actual definition of the term "professionalism":

Code:
pro·fes·sion·al·ism [pruh-fesh-uh-nl-iz-uhm] –noun
1. professional character, spirit, or methods.
2. the standing, practice, or methods of a professional, as distinguished from an amateur.
A professional service or person is very knowledgeable about their topic, with a proper education and experience in the subject matter, provides excellent quality work, and uses the proper tools for performing the work. There is no room for myth, misinformation or propaganda in a professional environment.

Consider this example...

You're sick. Very sick.
  • You go to Doctor A. He's a really nice guy, smiles the whole time you're there, loves to talk about baseball, and "seems" to know what he's doing. However, he tells you that your problem can't be fixed, and you're just going to die. Sorry.
  • You go to Doctor B. He's not smiling every minute you're there, he's not much of one for small talk, and he may even slag off that other doctor as an "idiot". But he diagnoses your issue, says you'll be fine, and gives you a prescription for some antibiotics. You're going to recover just fine.
Which doctor do you want?

Quote:
professional would not cut down the competition to encourage using their services, but to point out what I can offer that the competition can't.
No, sorry, that just doesn't cut it anymore. For probably 2-3 years now, a bulk of our projects have been fixing things other services have messed up.

For example:
  • It's not uncommon for a consumer to buy a new big screen TV, and find out that those VHS tapes they had converted to DVD look awful, compared to their retail DVDs. Not just somewhat inferior, but so awful as to be unwatchable at the now-larger viewing size.
  • In other cases, somebody decides they want to take 3-4 DVDs, and make a special video, so they seek editing services. When we see the DVDs, the quality is awful. When asking the customer about the original tape, they usually threw it away (in some cases, the so-called "professional service" did not return the tape!). When asked about the low quality, the response is often "we were told it couldn't look any better" or "we didn't know it could be improved"
These posts and future articles are a direct result of requests by some of our past (and even current) clients to fight this misinformation. Consumer can easily be misled, since video is not their specialty, and they are mighty pissed off when they find out they were misled (or even outright lied to, if that be the case) by a service provider or product seller.

We'll be doing the same with web design/maintenance, too, once the video series is done. There's just so much BS out there that it's actually started to overtake the quantity of accurate information! That is pathetic.

You'll find I'm a very pleasant person, but I've grown tired of misinformation. Hence this new forum, these new posts, and many more on the to-do list. I'm not alone either, several others are giving input into this series of posts and articles.

Quote:
the competition
I'm not sure I'd call many of these misinformation-spreading services our "competition". Most of them are just background noise.

Quote:
in the end, I went with the proper provider.
Let's not pretend here. You already said this person was your friend. You let your friend convert your videos.

And if your friend wants to avoid justified criticism for publishing something as silly as "tapes cannot be fixed" -- a specialty service that is not only possible, but for which and entire industry exists!! -- then I suggest he remove it and/or clarify what he means (i.e., that HIS service cannot correct tapes, instead of suggesting/stating it cannot be done).

These posts are made for consumer awareness, but if services can learn from them too, great! Less myth and misinformation will be propagated. And above all else, that is the point of these myth-busting posts/articles.

Thanks for writing.

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Last edited by kpmedia; 04-18-2010 at 09:41 PM.
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04-06-2013, 03:22 PM
tomswift tomswift is offline
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I most definitely agree that videos can be restored, but I feel that I must point out, that sometimes you can go to far, and end up making the video look worst than it was originally. I've done some video's where the original camera person never white balanced. I'll try to correct the balance (if it's very orange, I'll try to decrease the red and bring up the blue's and green's), but sometimes the video will look very unnatural when that is done, and the best thing is to remove the color correction, and just leave it with only Broadcast Colors on the video (that's just one of the things that I add when I convert any video, analog or digital, so that I know that the customer is getting back a video that plays within the standards for NTSC or PAL, and they don't get a video that slowly damages their TV).
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04-06-2013, 04:03 PM
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Very true... with caveats.

There's some things that should always be removed or corrected with VHS.
- remove chroma noise
- remove "color" bleeding caused by the chroma not overlapping properly on the luma
- adjust VHS too-low IRE

It's everything else where you can overdo it, from grain removal to color correction. You don't want to make people too "plastic", or make the video off-color because your monitor isn't properly calibrated.

Under-doing it is as bad as overdoing it.

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