VIDEOPERFECT
21 W. 38th St.
212-730-1411; 800-426-7437; videoperfect.com

You transferred your home movies to a videocassette back in the eighties, and thought your memories were preserved for life, right? Not so fast: Under normal conditions, most videotapes last only fifteen to twenty years, says Alex Shahgholi, the owner of VideoPerfect. In other words, you need to get your act together pronto and bring your family’s memory bank to Shahgholi, who will transfer everything onto a gleaming DVD, good for up to a century. His firm was one of the first to offer 8-mm.-film-to-tape transfers, and “we keep up with changing technology,” he says. VideoPerfect’s packages range from a basic no-frills transfer from VHS to DVD (starting at $49.95) to a full-on edited version with chapters and voice-overs, all done in a session where you sit down with a professional editor (starting at $169 for an hour of video with two hours of editing time). Film transfers are more expensive, but there are collateral benefits to saving your past. “Ninety-nine percent of the people walking out of the editing room are teary-eyed,” Shahgholi says.