Sony BetaCam and BetaCam SP Videotape Transfer to Digital Video File

Mosher Media still has all the old Sony tape decks and can transfer Sony BetaCam SP tapes to digital files. Need to transfer an old BetaCam or BetaCam SP tape to digital? Reach out today!

When I started my first job in television in 1992 I edited TV shows and commercials on a Sony RM-450 edit controller using two Sony Umatic 3/4″ tape decks. While we don’t have any of that equipment left we still have our Sony BetaCam SP tape decks and we are able to transfer BetaCam tapes to digital. If you have a BetaCam or BetaCam SP tape and you need it for a project or you just want to share it on social media send it in. We will transfer it to a digital file, email a link for downloading and return the tape to you. We have Sony DVcam and XDcam equipment and can transfer those formats as well. All transfer work happens right here in our studios in Akron, Ohio. If you need a tape transfered reach out today to get it started.

Dan Mosher
388 South Main Street Suite 425
Akron, Ohio 44311
(330) 376-3500
hello@moshermedia.com

Transcript of blog video:

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Mosher Media Camera Room. We have a lot of fun talking about old cameras and I love the comments. Especially when I say something that I think is right. Perhaps about the resolution or about how all these old cameras worked and some people call me out saying that’s not right and I love the comments. We’re going back 30 years or so with some of this equipment, especially the original Sony format where we started in the early 90s. Sony Beta Cam. And I have a couple of these beta decks still and they call me a hoarder at times because I can’t throw them away. And of course, the reason being they were even used, this might have been $6,000 or $8,000 in the mid 90s. And if you wanted to be in professional video production, where you could send a commercial that you had produced to the cable company or to the TV station, you had to have a professional format or know somebody that had the equipment. We were editing in those days even still on tape. So we had a couple of these where these were the editing computers before Final Cut or Premiere came along right after this. Let’s say it was, I think we did Final Cut when we first started nonlinear editing. Might have been Premiere for a while, then Final Cut, might have been some Avid. Boy, there was a lot going on there. A cube, the Turbo Cube, the new tech, the video toaster. Video toaster had a system called the Flyer and all of these systems were competing and just on the very cutting edge of nonlinear editing probably in the late 90s let’s say. But in the early mid 90s, we were editing on tape, we were shooting on tape. And I’ve got the old Beta Cam. This is a Sony DXC 537, and it still works just like the other ones we’ve shown in other videos. I love it.

Matt’s going to jump in here. He’s our camera operator helping me shoot these videos. But look at this. It’s 4×3. It’s standard. You could go shoot a video, right? You could put a beta tape in there right now and go shoot a video with that camera. And it’s probably 30 plus years old. But that’s okay. I’d love to turn the camera and show you how the beta back works. I’ll give you a demonstration. So this one is the Sony DXC 637. And this one here, this is this right here. This was the DV cam back. When this camera was new, it came with a Beta Cam recorder. This is a detachable part. So, when the Beta Cam recorder failed after many years of use, we upgraded. We put a DV cam back on. It was digital. So, this started as a Beta Cam camera. And you have on this side, you can see the, there it is. And it works. That also still works. The DV cam tape cassette holder right there. You can see the whole thing. Boy, weighs a ton. Can’t believe we carried these things around. These kids now, they don’t know. To go around with a DSLR and a gimbal and we won’t even get into all that. I encourage all of the young professionals coming into our building and the aspiring filmmakers part of our intern program. I love it. And of course at one point they all have to just take a turn picking up these cameras to just know how it was for us old codgers or the dinosaurs in the business let’s say back in the day. Many of the retired videographers from this era have significant back problems. But that’s not what this is about. This video is about the Beta Cam SP format. And we have all of the equipment. And if you have one of these tapes, and many video production companies, ad agencies, individual producers have shelves and shelves of these tapes. And what happens is people don’t maintain the equipment.

So we happen to have a handful of these decks. And over the past couple of years, the number of calls to transfer DV cam, XD cam, and old Beta Cam SP tapes has increased frequently. Now, I’m getting calls, do you still have all of that Sony equipment? You guys were a Sony shop for years. Do you still have your Beta Decks? And we do. So, if you have a Sony Beta Cam SP tape, and there were other companies like Maxell or I can’t remember the other ones now that made the media, but Sony made the Beta Cam format. So, we don’t have the Panasonic that was the equivalent in this era. I think it was called M2, was a very popular format. But, we don’t have any of the Panasonic equipment. We have all Sony Beta Cam SP. And if you have one of these tapes, you’d like to have it transferred. We offer this service. Call us, find us online at MosherMedia.com. Email, call, reach out through the website, do the whole thing. We would love to hear from you. And we would be more than happy to transfer your tape to digital, put it into a MP4 file, whatever you need, we could make and send it to you. We could even return the tape if you’d like. We have plenty of tape shelves here. I promise you, here in our building in beautiful downtown Akron, Ohio, we have a lot of space here. But at any rate, that’s why I save all the old equipment.

The next project, of course, we’re going to put all of this actually back into the rack and have it ready. The way we’ve been doing it is because it was infrequent, I would pull the decks off the shelf, transfer a tape, maybe we need something out of the archives, and then we wouldn’t need it again for another couple months or maybe not even for the rest of the year. So, we’d put the decks back in storage. But, we’re pulling them out. Everything still works, which is wonderful. So, we’re going to be back into the business of transferring tapes. Not that we ever left, but boy, the calls are coming in. So, again, we’d love to hear from you. You need a Beta Cam tape transferred, we’re doing them right here. Love to hear from you. Reach out MosherMedia.com. Find us. Thanks for watching.