AV Workshop

Film Transfer - Frame by Frame HD Film Transfer

Audio Video Workshop offers Frame by Frame High Definition Film Scanning / Film Transfer of 8mm film, Super8 film, and 16mm film to DVD, Bluray or a hard drive. We are located in Redwood City and serve the San Francisco Bay area and San Jose area.

Frame by frame scanning means your transfers are 100% flicker-free, crystal clear and razor-sharp from corner to corner. Our equipment uses a sprocketless drive to assure no film damage to your priceless memories.

16mm HD Film to Digital Conversion

FACT: Half of all 16mm movies made before 1950 are gone! Don’t let this happen to your old 16mm films – Let Us Save Your Precious Memories to DVD or Bluray Today!

Audio Video Workshop now offers full Frame-by-Frame High Definition 16mm Film Scanning. 

This is a recent sample from AV Workshop's frame by frame HD film scanning process. This film was cleaned and lubricated with an anti-static solvent, scanned in HD and color corrected to include brightness and contrast improvement. AV Workshop specializes in 8mm, Super 8 and 16mm film transfer for the San Jose / San Francisco Bay Area

8mm Film Clean & Prep by AV Workshop

Christina, one of AV Workshop's film tech, performing a proper 8mm Film Cleaning & Prep before the HD Film Scanning Transfer.

This is one of the most important steps to a clean and stable Film Transfer, yet seldom done. Unfortunately, companies like South Tree / Legacy Box skip this step as it takes extra time and money.

Film Transfer - High Definition Film Scanning

Here is a recent sample from our Film Transfer Lab in Redwood City - San Francisco Bay Area, CA

This film was scanned with our new RetroScan Universal. The RetroScan Universal is a sprocketless HD film scanner that can scan any type of film.

Frame by frame scanning means your transfers are 100% flicker-free, crystal clear and razor-sharp from corner to corner. AV Workshop's equipment uses a sprocketless drive to assure no film damage to your priceless memories.

In addition to frame-by-frame film scanning, our Enhanced film transfer includes scene by scene color correction as well as brightness and contrast improvement.

HD Film Transfer by AV Workshop

A well-known Santa Cruz skateboard distribution company brought AV Workshop their historic collection of tapes and films for transfer to digital mp4 files. These archives documented some of the top surfers and skateboarders in the Santa Cruz community during the late 80’s and early 90’s. Most of the videotapes were unique in that they were not normal VHS tapes, but rather professional grade 3/4″ U-matic tapes and S-VHS masters. During the 1980’s U-matic tapes were the broadcast industry standard for edit masters. This makes them one of the more rare tape formats to come across. Luckily, AV has all the professional grade equipment needed to convert irreplaceable film and video collections to digital! The skateboard company not only wanted to preserve their film and videotapes at the highest quality possible, but also wanted to make their movies editable for the future. Thus, AV Workshop’s Video to mp4 with HD Upres and HD Film Transfer services were the perfect options!

Convert Video to AVI or Quicktime - Video to Hard Drive

Audio Video Workshop can digitize your videotapes to high quality uncompressed digital computer files so you can edit them the way you want on your computer! For the MAC, we convert video to Quick Time files and for the PC we convert video to AVI Files.

Uncompressed Quick Time and AVI files yield the best possible quality and compatibility available. We can provide these digital video files to you on an external USB hard drive that you simply connect to your computer via a USB cable and start editing. Thus, you don’t have to worry about buying expensive playback equipment or the long tedious hours it takes for digitizing videotapes. By having us transfer your videos to a hard drive you will have the highest digital quality available as well as the most convenient/compatible video files for your editing software such as iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, Adobe Premiere, etc…

Intro to Audio Video Workshop - Complete Video Services

Welcome to Audio Video Workshop!

Why choose AV Workshop? AV Workshop has been in business for over 30 yrs and has never lost a client’s master or keepsake. Every staff member at AV Workshop has a B.A. Degree in this field. Since we have a storefront in the San Francisco Bay Area, you can walk in and drop your project off in person.

Do you ship work out like most other shops or do it there? We do all work in the house. Unlike small camera stores and big box stores like Costco, we perform all work right here in our Redwood City Lab. You can rest easy knowing your project will never leave our shop.

How long does it take? Depending on the type of work/media you have, it will take between 1 day and 4 weeks. However, most jobs are turned within 1-2 weeks.

Can I ship my project to you? Absolutely, you can order through our online store. You will receive instructions on how and where to ship your project. Orders over $300 qualify for FREE (Round Trip) shipping.

DVD Transfer - Video to DVD Transfer

Your videotapes will never look the same again!

Long time AV Workshop customer Bernardo M., brought in his distinguished Vintage Racing VHS tape Collection for transfer to DVD. Bernardo recorded these races every season over a 10 year period in the 1990s and 2000s. The VHS tapes were very special to him, for they documented some of the best Races of all time! These tapes were quite a challenge for AV Workshop as they were recorded in the EP (6hr) mode which can present a lot of quality issues such as a weak picture, video dropout, tracking errors, instability and noise. The AV team is always up for the challenge.

Our Video Transfer Process

1) Video Stabilization AV Workshop uses S-Video cables which separate luminance and chrominance (Color from Light). Thus, detail / edges will be a s sharp as possible. The video is stabilized with a TBC to alleviate unstable video and create a rock solid image.

2) Audio Enhancement On VHS we capture the normal audio channel instead of the Hifi channel as it is a dedicated audio channel and not disturbed from video dropout. Then, we raise the gain to approx -6db and apply noise reduction to sweeten the audio!

3) Video Editing We trim the beginning and end of every video removing unwanted dead air / TV Snow. Thus, you only see the recorded portion of your tapes.

4) Encoding / Output We maximize the bitrate of every DVD Transfer to allow the highest quality available.

AV Workshop ran the precious recordings through our freshly updated video transfer equipment. Both AV machine rooms have recently been updated and are setup with a large number of high-end JVC S-VHS VCRs. These decks are the best playback source for VHS tapes, especially VHS tapes recorded in EP. High end JVC S-VHS decks have a built in TBC and Video Stabilization filter to stabilize a weak and unstable video. Once the videotapes were digitized, we applied Level Optimization and Noise reduction to the audio. Each video was then edited to remove unwanted TV snow, and irrelevant content from the beginning and end. Thus, every DVD is just racing!

After the videos were edited, we created separate DVDs maximizing the bitrate capabilities of each disc to allow up to 2hrs of high quality content. We went the extra step for Bernardo, and tried to create a unique DVD for each Race where possible. Finally, the DVDs were labelled and consolidated into a convenient DVD Binder!