Southtree

Count your photos before placing order. Put them in baggies of 25 each. Then you know exactly how many and pay for the right amount. Wait for next sale and place order. Rest is easy. Once sent in, wait months to get them back, with many emails about status updates. But still way better than trying to make time to scan it all yourself :)

It took 6 months to receive my items back, but I was in the middle of a move so that was okay to wait. My VHS tapes were in poor condition, so my DVD recordings aren't great. DVD and thumb drives are much smaller to store, and the quality will not continue to deteriorate. My product did come back to me in a double box, so that was great. I continued to get emails from Southtree giving me updates on the materials. I am happy I didn't want my items back for any occasion. Six months is a long time, but it all worked out.

Got a thumb drive of 15 VHS tapes back much quicker than expected. That was great. The quality wasn't great but I'm sure that had more to do with the 25-30 year old tapes. It would have been nice if someone would have contacted me to see if I really wanted old television shows mixed in with children's birthdays and Christmas'. They clearly were not intended to be included but we had a few miss marked tapes.

Great experience. Packaging going and returning was excellent. Even with return time a little long, I was advised periodically of process. Believe delay was due to their huge backlog/covid.

I had some old audio tapes on reels that I sent to Southtree for digitizing. I received regular communications from Southtree on the project progress. What I thought would take a week or so took several weeks. That's the only complaint I have, otherwise the service did what was expected and I'm pleased.

Service was excellent.

Overall price was very good. Overall price includes the cost of the thumb drive.
Charging me $ 29.99 for a 16 GB Thumb drive was ridiculous.

Happy with the turnaround time, security of items, and delivery. Some of the videos were jumpy and not clear which made me a little disappointed for the price that I paid.

This company is very organized and made it easy to follow through. Everything went smoothly and I received my material back faster than expected. They kept me up to date every step of the way which was comforting as these are our precious memories.

However, I feel like a three minute 8mm shouldn't be charged the same as a long VHS. I sent in two different orders; one with 24 8mm film, and one with 24 VHS tapes. I received the first order back with all the material on one DVD, the second order had 24 DVD's. That just doesn't compute in my mind. Unfortunately everyone seems to do it this way and because of that I will probably use this company again.

I used Southtree a few years back for digitizing home movies and recently sent off 4,000 pictures to be scanned (4 orders). The process is easy and the communication is great with regular updates along the way. The scan resolution is not as high as other sites but it is fine and you don't have crazy file size to deal with. We had two issues:
1) We went through every picture we sent in so we could tag the photos with comments written on the back of the originals. Of the 4,000 pictures sent in we had about 40-50 that didn't get scanned. They were not marked in anyway and we wouldn't have known if we hadn't checked them. Most were small wallet-sized photos so that could be part of it. We just scanned those ourselves.
2) We had about 200 negatives that we sent in that they didn't scan. That's fine and they tagged those saying to contact them if we wanted to submit something else in their place. I contacted customer support and they said that we could add them to our next order. The issue was I didn't have a next order to place. Ultimately I found a couple folders of pics and placed another order and they will give us credit on the extra items we include with this order. Not really an elegant solution but it works.

Overall, the price is good and the process is convenient. Just hope that all goes smooth for your order or you'll have a little work to do to straighten it out.

My first review gave them one star, but after receiving two calls from a manager, it's clear they know they could have done better. This is all a consumer can really ask for in a company.

The movies are all over 50 years old and some over 60 years old and in poor condition. The digitized versions were as good as can be expected. It took 5 months from the time of the order to when I got the files. I wasn't sure they would get the job done but they did. For the price and for the quality of the product, I recommend them.

Everything went as we were told and we were quite pleased - glad to have it done. There were just a few instances where the movie was flickering perhaps not your fault. I was quite sure I had already done this, but here it is. WE would use the service again.

If you need to contact them, it's better to contact by email. The product was good delivered in a timely manner. Thanks again.

I was kept informed of each step in the process. Any questions were promptly answered. They cleaned slides that had been in storage for over thirty years

They had one mistake on a transfer to DVD by not rewinding the tape before copying. But they were quick to resolve the issue and did an extra tape free of charge and waiving the shipping charges. They were quick to respond and I would recommend them without reserve.

I took advantage of a deal I found for Southtree on Facebook. I sent in 10 tapes and was kept informed on each step of the process. The turnaround time was excellent. It was really great being able to see these old video but a couple had some damage that was disappointing. 4 stars is because one of my videos was labeled as a school show but only had about 45 seconds of something totally different. I wish I could have replaced that one or gotten a credit back. Seriously, it was obviously a mistake, but all mine I guess.

Very happy with service and return time. Unfortunately quality was poor but that was due to the original vhs tape. I would defintely use Southtree again.

Could not have been happier. Great experience. I plan to send more tapes soon to have them converted. *******

Was great to see my old memories come back to life. My only complaint is three of my videos have no sound. I'm an electrical engineer and can't understand how the DVDs can have great video but no sound.

I sent some priceless 8mm films for conversion - had a concern the first time that they were not done properly, they re- ran them and I was pleased with the results. Turnaround time was very reasonable.

I've now sent in three total orders covering a LOT of media, including 8mm, VHS, and Betamax format, and 35mm slides. None of my orders were all one format, but a mix. While the service and quality is excellent, albeit a bit slow (which is fine as I'd rather the techs take their time and get it right!), I find the process of creating an order to be a nightmare. The system is based on a "piece" model, where a single video reel or tape is a single "piece", the order form requires one to select 3, 6, 12, 24, or 48 total tapes "pieces". What if I have 20? What if I want slides? First you need to figure out that a "piece" constitutes 25 slides... then you could organize 100 slides, or 4 pieces of slides... then I could add those 4 pieces to my 20 video/movie items to make up a 24 piece order (20 movie/video pieces and 4 35mm slides (100 slides)...

I don't know how to do it better, but I'd prefer the ability to create my own bundle of whatever number of movies I may have; and, have a "per slide" scan cost and simply count up all my slides and pay a per-piece cost and done. In that way I can easily leave all my slides in their existing box of 24 or 36 slides, WHICH are then also logically grouped into a chronology from first to last. Instead they end up in zip-lock bags of 25 slides, with a single "piece-numbered" bar code. I find it confusing to place my order without a customer service rep to assist, and very tedious to package them up. I strongly suspect I'll encounter the same when I decide to tackle all my photo albums, which are generally populated by topic of some kind.

Sort out a better way to order, and this review goes to 5 stars immediately!

I sent in four super 8mm films and one 16mm film (double perf). The whole process took about a month or two, which is perfectly reasonable to me as I'm not in any rush. All of the super 8mm films were scanned, but the 16mm film was returned unscanned, although I was not charged for the 16mm film. The scans of the super 8 films were of decent quality, especially for the price of $15 per film. The files I got were mp4 files with a resolution of 720 x 480 with a bitrate of 3310kbps at 17 frames per second. I'd say that they are good for draft/general purpose use. It is an inexpensive way to see what is on a reel of film and to decide if you want to spend the money to send it to a high end film lab for a high resolution telecine transfer.

I'm disappointed that my 16mm film wasn't transferred and I never really received a reason why other than "the lab was unable to transfer your film". The website says that they can transfer 16mm films, so I'm not sure why mine was rejected.

I look forward to using Southtree in the future as I purchase a lot of films that need a quick, inexpensive digital copy.

I have included 3 still frames from one of the super 8mm films that they transferred for me.

After reading the negative reviews, I was scared to send my tapes to them, but I had no issues at all and my tapes all came back. The discs are perfect and I am very pleased.