Archive for May, 2011

DAT to MP3, .wav or CD

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

DAT, which stands for Digital Audio Tape, was used by consumers and professionals for many years to preserve high-quality audio.  But like many other audio formats, it was replaced with something more conventient.

Today DAT audio tapes are all but obsolete.

Many people and organizations still have DAT tapes filled with important audio. The question is, how can these DAT tapes be converted to something useful?

We added our DAT to MP3, .wav or CD service as a way to help people preserve and archive the audio on their DAT tapes. Our service is unique because we capture the digital audio data directly.  Instead of sending the audio through an audio cable into an audio interface, we send the digital audio data straight into the computer!  This ensures the you get a bit by bit transfer of your DAT audio without losing any audio quality.

If your DAT tapes are important to you, let us help you archive them to MP3, .wav or CD.

To learn more about our service, visit http://www.thickandmystic.com/dat-to-digital.php

Posted in Analog to Digital - Audio | No Comments »

Overscan – Analog Video

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

Did you know that when you are watching video tapes on your television you aren’t seeing everything?

Ever since the first televisions were manufactured, there has been an area of the screen called the “overscan” area.  To put it simply, there is a portion of the video that you never see!  The outer edges of the video are literally sent outside the visible area of your screen.  The basic idea is that the video is larger than the television monitor you are watching it on.

This overscan area has been particularly significant when watching analog video tape. Analog video tape has imperfections that are normally only visible on the outer edges of the screen. Although it is common to see distortion on all the edges, the imperfections are generally most obvious on bottom edge of the screen,

Traditionally, this distortion was automatically masked out by your television. As a result most people never even knew it was there.  For the average consumer this distortion was on ALL video tape until the advent of digital video (miniDV, Digital8).

When you “capture” old analog video tape to a hard drive through modern capture equipment, the entire screen is captured. The computer lets you see EVERYTHING, it does not mask out the distortion and imperfections on the edges of the analog tape.

These bits of distortion and imperfection were always there, but you were never able to see them.

Learn more about our Video to Digital Services here – http://www.thickandmystic.com/vhs-to-digital.php

Posted in Analog to Digital - Video | No Comments »