VHS to DVD: How Much to charge?

[Fearless Leader]

My German teacher has asked me to turn quite a few VHS's to DVD's, She instists on paying me for my work so I agreed but we never came up with a price.

I have no clue how much to charge, simply put.

Anybody have any ideas for prices?

 

[GoGoSamGo]

My German teacher has asked me to turn quite a few VHS's to DVD's, She instists on paying me for my work so I agreed but we never came up with a price.

I have no clue how much to charge, simply put.

Anybody have any ideas for prices?

I personally charge $25 per DVD for anyone that needs this done (includes Title menu, Chapter Selection, DVD Case, DVD Case Cover, and DVD Label).

 

[RedTomato]

Ask what she wants to see, and lay out your prices for anything that involves extra work. $25 as offered above is quite steep for me, but that includes a LOT of extra work, and is a fair price for what was offered.

Guess I'm saying, are these insanely precious tapes of her wedding, or are they a bunch of old german TV programs that you can slam onto a cheap DVD?

Ask her how she plans to use them? If they are for showing in class, she may want a nice starting graphic, and a couple chapter markings at the right places, but no fancy DVD jacket.

 

[cgratti]

Come up with an hourly rate: X amount of dollars for X amount of tape transferred. This way you wont get paid $25 for 40 hours of footage to transfer. Come up with something like $5 per hour of footage converted and burned to DVD.

 

[diamond3]

$5 an hour of footage. Thats a little low. I would say go with a flat rate per DVD. 20 or 25 for up to 2 hours total length as the base price. Then if they want scene selection menu or any other customization done, you can add on top of the base price.

 

[killr_b]

Whoa, $25 bucks. I should out-source to you.

I actually charge $60 for two hours of VHS put on one DVD. Not an easy task, and sometimes DL discs don't play on my customers machines. (Enter DVD2oneX for compression to single layer FAST)

Then I charge $5 each for additional copies.

My footage is color corrected and filtered with a process I have developed for awesome looking VHS transfers. The DVD includes a menu, chapters but not a chapter selection menu, and the best audio cleaning I can do. I think they're pretty good and I get customers enough of the time…

 

[diamond3]

Whoa, $25 bucks. I should out-source to you.

I actually charge $60 for two hours of VHS put on one DVD. Not an easy task, and sometimes DL discs don't play on my customers machines. (Enter DVD2oneX for compression to single layer FAST)

Then I charge $5 each for additional copies.

My footage is color corrected and filtered with a process I have developed for awesome looking VHS transfers. The DVD includes a menu, chapters but not a chapter selection menu, and the best audio cleaning I can do. I think they're pretty good and I get customers enough of the time…

I am just curious as to how you go about cleaning up the audio and color? I've never really tried, but I'm just curious as to what it can do. What programs do you use? Thanks

 

[RedTomato]

I actually charge $60 for two hours of VHS put on one DVD.

My footage is color corrected and filtered with a process I have developed for awesome looking VHS transfers. The DVD includes a menu, chapters but not a chapter selection menu, and the best audio cleaning I can do. I think they're pretty good and I get customers enough of the time…

$60/hour is fair for high quality transfers, with professional colour correcting and professional audio cleaning, and full DVD accessories.

$5/hour is fair for straight VHS-to-DVD rip via a home VHS player and consumer camcorder with analogue passthrough.

It's all in the quality of service.

I recently had some 9mm home movie reels from 1930s transferred to DVD by the BBC (they were shown on BBC 1 a few weeks ago) and I think it cost them over £1000 per hour of 9mm footage.

 

[Fearless Leader]

Im adding chapters, the main reason to go to dvd's, and creating a simple menu in DVD studio pro. No corrections expect where a bit of a tape was destroyed. We settled on 8$ a VHS, which pays for the disk, and a bit of my time.
I went a bit cheap because of the amount of VHS's im converting and the fact that she is a teacher, on teacher's salary, and even if my school reimburses her, its a school, and don't feel like gouging them.

 

[GoGoSamGo]

Whoa, $25 bucks. I should out-source to you.

I actually charge $60 for two hours of VHS put on one DVD. Not an easy task, and sometimes DL discs don't play on my customers machines. (Enter DVD2oneX for compression to single layer FAST)

Then I charge $5 each for additional copies.

My footage is color corrected and filtered with a process I have developed for awesome looking VHS transfers. The DVD includes a menu, chapters but not a chapter selection menu, and the best audio cleaning I can do. I think they're pretty good and I get customers enough of the time…

See my logic at the time of pricing was that if the price is lower than every where else then they'll come to me

I do tweak the audio a bit and do mess a little with color due to it being a VHS and most of time filmed at very bad quality, but I don't spend my time going through the entire tape or anything. I also havn't had the problem (yet) of any discs not working in customers players ( I used Tayio Yuden Disks ). Just like you I do a max of 2 hours per DVD.

 

[killr_b]

I am just curious as to how you go about cleaning up the audio and color? I've never really tried, but I'm just curious as to what it can do. What programs do you use? Thanks

Well, I use Soundtrack pro to remove a lot of the hissy noise that vhs usually has. And I use Final Cut Pro with a few plug-ins, some I bought and one I made. If things need to get crazy I'll use Shake for some animated color corrections or cc that really needs key framing.

 

[killr_b]

$60/hour is fair for high quality transfers, with professional colour correcting and professional audio cleaning, and full DVD accessories.

$5/hour is fair for straight VHS-to-DVD rip via a home VHS player and consumer camcorder with analogue passthrough.

It's all in the quality of service.

I recently had some 9mm home movie reels from 1930s transferred to DVD by the BBC (they were shown on BBC 1 a few weeks ago) and I think it cost them over £1000 per hour of 9mm footage.

Cool, that makes me feel better. For a second I was like, whoa! I know I live in a nice area of California, but dang.

Ya, once a guy brought me a sample one someone from the next town had done for him. He paid $80, so I told him $60 and that's where I got my "standard" price.
The crazy part was that the disc was titled the default title of an iMovie project, "My Great Movie."
He said the guy told him he used FCP and could probably do a better job than me.
After I showed him iMovie my business got a lot more VHS to DVD transfers that I'm sure dude from down the street was getting.

Nice, I never really thought about this topic, but it is a prevalent request.