The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
MEMORY RESCUERS
Business updates home video formats
Home videos and memories are more convenient to access, save and rewatch when customers stop by Melendez Video Services.
The business, located at 117 Cleveland Ave. in Amherst, specializes in transferring those old family videos into modern and digital formats for folks to use with current technology whenever they want.
“What we like to say, is we are the savers of the family archives,” said Tony Melendez, who owns the business with his wife, Lori. “We take people’s pictures, films, tapes, whatever it may be, and we convert it either to a DVD, a flash drive/digital format and also on the cloud.
“We are part of the Home Video Studio brand that operates the Digital Video Archive cloud service,” he said.
“What we like to say, is we are the savers of the family archives.”
— Tony Melendez
“It’s often called the ‘last transfer’ because when you put it into the cloud, you’re done,” Melendez said.
Melendez has been doing videos since 1986, he said.
“I did my first wedding 34 years ago,” he said. “In 2002, I visited Home Video Studio, out of Indianapolis. We got together with them, joined their network and became the Home Video Studio for Amherst. We still retained the Melendez Video Services name because a lot of people in Amherst and Lorain know me that way.”
Melendez said the business is known for being able to transfer virtually any video.
“We do all the 16 mm film and 8 mm film ... and I have transferred films that are from as far back as the 1920s,” he said. “We’ve done a lot of the football films for Lorain High School over the years.
“We’ve done a lot of videos from back in the day. We actually transferred the video of when President (John F.) Kennedy, when he was a senator, stopped by George Daniel Field. We actually have three different videos of that; three people recorded and filmed it that day (Sept. 27, 1960).”
New technology
Melendez said one of the reasons he has customers is because they don’t have the old equipment anymore to watch the videos.
“We really focus on converting family films into something you can watch,” he said. “Some people don’t have the VHS player, projector
or DVD player anymore. So, we can convert all of that into an mp4 format for folks to access. We also cover all the films that I mentioned like 16 and 8 mm. We really can convert any type of video.”
Melendez said the Digital Video Archive is really the next step for keeping home videos going.
“The cloud service costs $7.95 per month to access your videos if you go over 2 GB of storage,” he said. “I know they will be doing a pricing structure that will be in three tiers for folks to only pay for the service they want.
“It’s also like any other subscription service, so folks can go month-tomonth. You are also free to download all the videos from the cloud and stop paying the subscription on a monthly basis.”
Digital Video Archive is convenient for customers, Melendez said.
“The first 2 GB are free and then it goes up to what is seemingly limitless storage,” he said. “Videos in the cloud can be shared and downloaded easily.
“Folks are sticking with the service because it allows your videos to always be there when you need them. There is an app that folks can use on their phones. We also have an app on the Amazon Fire TV Stick. We have an agreement with them, so folks can plug the Fire Stick in to access everything from the cloud to their TV.”
Melendez said the business also does more than just converting the video.
“We also offer video editing,” he said. “We can take videos through a restoration process of sorts by converting to play in HD.
“We also go through a video and add improvements to the lighting, remove dark spots and also edit parts of a video out if folks want. It really is a whole range to make sure people can keep their family videos and watch them for years to come.”