Your memories, handled with care from start to finish.
Old home movies and recordings aren’t replaceable. That’s why every item you give Rewind CT is tracked throughout the entire digitization process.
Whether you have one tape or a box that’s been sitting in the closet for 30 years, here’s what happens after you hand it to us.
1. You Give Us Your Media
Give us your VHS tapes, VHS-C tapes, audio cassettes, or other supported media.
Not sure exactly what you have? That’s okay. We’ll identify it when we inventory your collection.
2. We Inventory Everything
Every tape is assigned a unique inventory number when we receive it.
We scan, label, and record each item in your order, and you’ll receive a copy of the inventory so we both know exactly what was received.
Your inventory number stays with the physical tape and its digital files throughout the entire process.
3. We Digitize Your Recordings
Your recordings are captured directly from the original media into a digital format using dedicated playback and capture equipment.
We don’t send your tapes somewhere else for processing. Your media stays local and is handled by Rewind CT.
Because analog recordings are captured in real time, a two-hour home movie takes approximately two hours to digitize. We don’t simply scan through your tapes looking for highlights. The recording is captured from beginning to end.
4. We Review Every Conversion
After capture, we review the digital copy to make sure the recording was transferred successfully and completely.
Blank or unnecessary footage at the beginning and end of the recording is trimmed, and we perform basic processing to make the digital version easier to watch and listen to.
Standard service includes:
- Basic video upscaling
- Basic audio enhancement and leveling
- Trimming blank footage from the beginning and end
- Conversion to a modern, widely compatible digital format
- Verification of the completed digital file
We don’t edit the actual content of your home movies unless you specifically ask us to.
5. What You See Is Sometimes What’s on the Tape
We want to preserve your recordings as faithfully as possible, but digitization can’t recreate information that no longer exists on the original tape.
Older tapes may contain tracking lines, static, color shifts, dropouts, distortion, audio noise, or other artifacts caused by age, storage conditions, previous playback, or deterioration.
We’ll do our best to produce a clean, watchable digital copy, but we can’t guarantee that every imperfection in the original recording can be removed.
And sometimes those imperfections are part of the charm of watching a home movie from 1987.
6. Want Us to Make It Look Better?
For recordings that need some extra attention, additional restoration services are available by request.
This can include more extensive work such as color correction, noise reduction, audio repair, stabilization, editing, or other restoration techniques.
Restoration is charged hourly based on the actual time spent working on your recording, not the length of the tape.
You can also set a limit.
For example, you can tell us:
“See what you can do, but don’t spend more than two hours on restoration.”
We’ll never exceed your approved limit without asking you first.
7. You Get Your Memories Back
When everything is complete, you’ll receive your original media along with your new digital copies.
Depending on your order, files can be provided on your own USB drive, a drive purchased through Rewind CT, or through digital delivery.
Your original tapes are always returned to you.
From Your Box to Your Screen
Drop Off → Inventory → Label → Digitize → Review → Enhance → Deliver
Your tapes may be decades old. Our process isn’t.
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Your Privacy & Our Retention Policy
Your recordings belong to you.
We temporarily retain a working copy of your digital files for 30 days after your completed order is delivered. This gives you time to verify your files and allows us to replace them if something goes wrong with your initial delivery.
After 30 days, our working copies are deleted. If you would like your files deleted sooner, just let us know.
We do not use, share, publish, or display customer recordings without explicit permission.
Privacy Transfer
Prefer that we don’t review the contents of your recordings?
Just let us know.
With a Privacy Transfer, your media is captured directly to digital without routine content review. Automated technical checks can still be performed to verify that a digital file was created successfully, but we won’t intentionally watch or listen to the recording.
Because the content isn’t manually reviewed, we can’t provide the same level of assurance that the entire recording transferred correctly or identify problems occurring within the recording.