Here’s your one stop shop for all the new gear you will need to start and grow your transfer business!
Blackmagic Design Hyperdeck Recorders:
NOTE: you will need a fast SD card (UHS-II) or SSD to record to. See below in the storage section for options. You will also need an SDI cable for the input, and SDI or HDMI for the output.
Hyperdeck Studio HD Mini (record up to 1080P)
Hyperdeck Studio HD Plus (record up to 4K)
Hyperdeck Rack (to install the above into 19″ racks)
Blackmagic Design Teranex:
Teranex Express (to de-interlace and up-convert to 1080p or 4K)
Monitors and Multi-viewers:
Multi-View 4 (Note highly suggest buying front control panel)
Front Control Panel for Multi-View 4
Multi-View 16 – greatest room for expansion, as it can view 1, 4, 9 or 16 sources
Smartview 4K SDI Monitor – Excellent main monitor for viewing the output of a Multi-View, to monitor all your transfers.
HDMI to SDI – this simple little device is necessary to capture from an HDV deck like the HVR-M25U or DVD player that only has an HDMI output.
LaCie D2 Professional External USB-C Hard Drive, with enterprise drive inside
18TB • 14TB • 8TB
LaCie Rugged Mini External Hard Drive Portable
5TB • 4TB • 1TB
Samsung T7 Shield Portable SSD – up to 1050MB/s, USB 3.2 Gen2
4TB • 2TB • 1TB
SanDisk Professional G-RAID Shuttle 8 – Transportable Enterprise-Class Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C
144TB • 96TB • 48TB
Lexar Professional 1667x 256GB SDXC UHS-II Memory Card – great speed for the price. Make sure you only buy good brand names of memory cards.
ProGrade Digital SD UHS-II Dual-Slot Memory Card Reader – not all card readers are created equally! Go for the best.
Need more Thunderbolt ports? This 5-port OWC Thunderbolt Hub packs a punch! It turns one Thunderbolt 3 port into 3, and adds a USB 3.2 port as well.
HP Color LaserJet Pro M255dw Wireless Laser Printer, Remote Mobile Print, Duplex Printing, Works with Alexa. It’s what I use to print my color brochures.
Toner for HP Color LaserJet Pro M255:
Black • Yellow • Cyan • Magenta
Save money by printing documents on a black & white printer, with much cheaper toner. Brother Compact Monochrome Laser Printer, HL-L2350DW, Wireless Printing, Duplex Two-Sided Printing. It’s what I use in my office.
Toner for Brother HL-L2350DW:
Standard yield 1,200 pages • High yield 3,000 pages (recommended)
Using premium paper for your brochures and flyers makes a big impact! You can save 15% if you set up a subscription on Amazon.
Printed thermal labels are MUCH more professional, less wasteful, and use far less time than printing on a printer, cutting, and taping. Plus you never have to replace ink!
Pack of 500 thermal labels for when you run out.
Brother Printer PTD400AD Versitile Label Maker. There are SO many uses for this label machine! Label gear you rent out, number your machines so you don’t get confused as you capture, make your office neat with labeled bins, label client hard drives very professionally… and lots more!
Replacement labels for label maker above. You do go through these fairly quickly, so it’s good to have extras.
I use a LOT of these clip fans in my office. Anywhere you feel heat building up, put one of these. You’ll greatly extend the life of your equipment, as heat is the #1 killer.
In places where a clip fan won’t fit, this 4-speed mini table fan is great.
Having a good postal scale with separate readout (for measuring larger items) can save you a lot of money on postage! If you sell a lot of things on eBay, it can really add up.
Using a rewinder like this one for VHS speeds your importing because you don’t have to stop to rewind before you start recording. It also extends the life of your decks. For other formats, you’ll have to look on eBay for used ones.
You may consider adding color grading services as a way of upselling your video transfers. You can charge $35-45 per half hour for this, so it adds up fast! When I first started using a color panel when grading TV series, it accelerated my speed by a whopping 500%. No exaggeration!
The big daddy of color grading panels, the Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve Mini Panel (also comes with Resolve Studio Software). Expensive, and only works with Resolve, but this really is the best.
The little brother to the Mini, the Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve Micro Panel is much more affordable and still extremely capable, but also only works with Resolve.
The Tangent Wave2 would be my recommended panel for most users, as it has everything you need and is compatible with many different apps, such as Resolve, Premiere, After Effects, Lightroom, and more.
The Tangent Ripple is a budget starter panel, but will still greatly speed up and improve your color grading.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Pacific Image makes the best slide/negative scanners, but you MUST use 3rd party VueScan software for the best results. You may see poor reviews for these scanners, but most complaints relate to the bundled software.
Pacific Image PrimeFilm XA Plus **BEST** 35mm Slide/Negative Scanner. Very fast: scans slide at 5,000 dpi in just over a minute.
Pacific Image PrimeFilm XEs **BUDGET** 35mm Slide/Negative Scanner (can handle smaller negative sizes with optional 3rd party trays)
PrimeFilm 120 Pro Plus – Scan up to Medium Format 120/135 Film & 35mm Slides. Expensive but nothing will scan medium format negatives better.
PowerSlide X Plus Automatic 35mm Slide Scanner – Auto batch scan up to 50 slides. Fast too – 50 slides at 5,000 dpi take about an hour. Very expensive, but if you’re scanning a large library this is what you’ll want.
Epson Perfection V600 Flatbed Photo Scanner. Great for prints, but do not use any flatbed scanner for 35mm slides and negatives (except for negatives larger than 120 – use an Epson v850 for these).
Scanning Accessories:
Loupedeck+ controller, to greatly speed up photo editing (see also full color panels above).
Electric blower – great for cleaning prints, negatives and slides.
Antistatic brush – for pesky particles that the blower won’t remove.
Giottos AA1903 Rocket Air Blaster Large – the best manual blower for when you need a gentler clean (like for blowing inside a scanner opening).
Slide storage containers… perfect for storing slides after they are removed from carousels.
Light table – crucial for cleaning negatives, and evaluating negatives and slides.
Recommended Computer, Monitor, and accessories:
You will need a fast computer for compressing files, and if you want to scale your business, you will want a lot of bandwidth (which may include fast Thunderbolt docks and card readers). The Apple Refurbished Store is an excellent place to find deals on the computer. If you can afford one, a Mac Studio Ultra (even M1) is a powerhouse with 6 full-speed Thunderbolt ports. The base Mac Studio would be my second pick, followed by a MacBook Pro M3 Max (faster than the Mac Studio but fewer ports). You may also want to consider an older iMac Pro because the screen is incredible for photo and video editing. Speaking of this, you should also have a very good quality monitor for properly evaluating files, and it’s worth mentioning that a good monitor will usually outlast your computer. Recommended accessories are below.
BenQ PD3220U 32-inch 4K Thunderbolt 3 Monitor. Pricy, but beautiful monitor. If you only have one, this would be a great one.
BenQ PD2725U 27-inch 4K Thunderbolt 3 Monitor. Smaller, but super high resolution 4K and a little more affordable.
BenQ PD3420Q Ultrawide 34-inch USB-C Monitor. Tons of real estate!
ASUS ProArt Display 34-inch Ultrawide Curved Professional HDR Monitor (PA34VCNV). More affordable than the BenQ ultrawide.
ASUS ProArt Display PA278QV 27-inch WQHD (2560 x 1440). This is my main monitor… I love ProArt displays. And it is the most affordable of all.
Rack Units and Tape Organizers:
12U (12 unit space) table rack stand – excellent for holding several Teranex units, Hyperdeck recorders (with rack above), Multi-View 16, and Smartview 4K. Allows plenty of ventilation.
Rockville 3U rack / bag combo. These are excellent for when you need to transport your gear, and when the outer bag is removed they stack well too. Several heights and depths available.
Holds 50 miniDV tapes!
Holds about 15 VHS tapes.
Holds 30 audio cassettes.
Cleaning Tapes & Supplies, Blank Tapes, VHS-C Adapters:
Excellent VHS-C adapter.
VHS head cleaning tape.
miniDV / DVCAM / HDV head cleaning tape
(also works in DVCPro with miniDV to DVCPro adapter).
Blank VHS tapes (used for tape repair and/or mold cleaning when you need to replace a housing).
Blank VHS-C tape (used for tape repair and/or mold cleaning when you need to replace a housing).
99.9% medical grade alcohol for manually cleaning tape heads.
Recommended Cables:
12G Superbat SDI Cable – 15 feet • 6 feet • 3 feet
S-Video Cable – 12 feet • 6 feet
RCA Stereo Red/White Cable • 12 feet • 6 feet
3-RCA Yellow/Red/White Cable – 12 feet • 6 feet
RCA Yellow Composite Cable – 12 feet • 6 feet
3-RCA Component Cable – 12 feet • 6 feet