Should I restore vhs videos?

[Grace's Mom]

I want to know if it would be in my best interest to buy the equipment to transfer vhs tapes to my computer? I am starting a business of editing videos like taking 4 hours worth of material and editing it down to one and adding music, titles etc. I am thinking about the AG 1980 or the JVC 9000 series plus getting a TBC. I am on a limited budget at this time but if the business grows then I will have more $ to spend. I am assuming that I will find a lot of people with home movies on vhs. Maybe I should not assume this? I am a newbie and I am not sure if I need to be in the "restoration" business to do what I want which is really video editing. But then again if there is money to be made in the restoration business then I would like to learn and do that as well as video editing. Thanking for reading, please redirect me if I am not posting in the place I should be.
Grace's Mom

[guns1inger]

I wouldn't assume that you will make your fortune this way. What you are proposing is time consuming work, and once you start charging appropriately for your time and skills, you will find that many people will balk at the cost. For the same cost they will be able to buy a DVD Recorder and be satisfied with the outcome they get. Only those that have very special cause will want the full works and feel it is worth the cost of the service.

[lordsmurf]

You'll find it may be impossible to transfer some tapes at all without professional- and broadcast-grade equipment. In my opinion, somebody who buys equipment from consumer outlets (Walmart, Best Buy, etc) should not be in business. To me, that's like buying a bag of cement at Home Depot, and wanting to be a construction engineer of a local bridge.

Contrary to gunslinger, I find most people want high quality transfers, but few know such services can be performed. They're often willing to pay for good work, especially when it means their wedding or home movies will suddenly appear at a quality similar to their store-bought DVDs, in terms of low-noise and low-artifact quality.

However, all that said, buying the equipment, and knowing how to use it and diagnose tapes, is a skill with a high learning curve, and cannot be learned easily. The only folks who know how have either had video as a hobby for many years (decade+) or have a formal education in the subject (college).

[bendixG15]

As a person who has been in several unsuccesful ventures, I did learn a thing or two about business and groceries.

After busting your ass for 10 years and starving, you will finally learn the craft and the business end only to discover that very few people have VHS tapes. Translation is, its not a growing business, it is a dying business.

If you want a hobby, then go for it, its more fun than golf.

[Wile_E]

Even if you do find people that want VHS/Hi-8 tapes transferred, these people still don't want to pay much. They may have 20+ tapes they want transferred, but they sure won't pay a premium price for each. They want it done as cheap as possible.

I recently completed transferring about 45 Hi-8 tapes for a friend. Most were 2-hr long each. It took a lot of time to edit, encode, and then make menus for the DVD's, and author them out. In the end, after all my costs, I didn't make more than $15 each. And I couldn't really charge the guy more, since it was so many tapes, he wouldn't be able to afford it otherwise.

[guns1inger]

That is the point I was trying to make. Yes, there are people who are willing and indeed happy to have special tapes restored and transferred. However, for the majority of people they are either unwilling to pay what the work is worth, or see it as more cost effective to buy a DVD recorder and do it themselves, albeit without the polish a skilled restoration can bring.

If you can tap into the audience who do want quality work, great. But it isn't as big a market as we might like to think.