Addie’s competitor prices:
Precision Transfers
Jeet Video
London Drugs
McBain Camera
ReelMensch Studios

VHS quality:
SP is short for Standard Play. Standard play allows you to record information onto the tape the way it was intended, with no quality loss. By default, VCRs and camcorders will record your footage as standard play. On a standard VHS tape, recording footage in SP mode will yield 2 hours of video.

LP is short for Long Play. Long play allows you to record much more information at the expense of quality. It accomplishes this by reducing the speed the tape is run through the VCR. As the tape speed decreases, the quality will also decrease. You’ll notice this effect when comparing a tape recorded at LP versus one recorded at SP, especially after years of storage. The LP tape will appear more blurred, have more tracking and color issues than tapes recorded at SP. A VHS tape recorded at LP can hold roughly 4 hours of video.

EP/SLP is short for extended play. Extended play is similar to LP, but actually provides you even more recording time. EP was primarily used to document long, continuous events without the need to change video tapes every 2 hours. Due to the fact that the video is not of optimal quality, many times this setting was not used in order to preserve the quality of your footage. Tapes recorded at EP usually are the most problematic after years of storage, displaying a wide variety of tape damage symptoms including color loss, audio loss, frame skipping, and tracking issues.

SP = Best quality
LP = Medium quality
EP/SLP = Poorest quality

Typically, on the video Addie converts, the first few seconds are slightly distorted due to the age of the cassettes and the oxidation. The quality of the digital files are the quality of the cassette. Addie does not add any extra compression on the digital file(s). As an added bonus, all videos that are converted are stored on our long-term redundant backup storage drive at no extra cost. If you lose your videos in 10 years, you can be confident that we have them here backed up and will get you a copy again at no extra cost.