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Scancafe vs Southtree

edmund

New member
Any thoughts?

Southtree is running a 50% off sale today, which is pretty hard to beat.

But in terms of quality, seems like scancafe is still better.

I'm scanning slides (about 2000) and 4x6 prints (about 1000). Also about 25 Hi8 tapes.

Anyone have experience with either of these?

Thank you
 

glenerrolrd

Workshop Member
Scancafe has a good reputation and has been endorsed by several well known professionals . They are know for excellent quality ,good prices and very slow service . The scans were all being done in India and the turn around was several months .

The issue ....how do you feel about sending away your slides for an extended period . When I studied this a few years ago ...I determined that I needed to send my slides in smaller batches and for lower quality scans . Then after I could reviews them with PhotoMechanic I could select a smaller number for “best quality scans “ . I haven t done this because of the logistics of sending and receiving the packages .

I am interested if anyone has found a company that can turn around quick ,cheap scans so I can sort thru about 15K slides .
 

edmund

New member
Bumping this back up as I never sent any photos in and am back to deciding between these two.

Does anyone have experience or know the resolution differences between the two for video?

Southtree states this for only $15.95:
High quality digital encoding: MPEG-4 H.264, 640×480, 2500 kbps, 128 kbps AAC audio. If you don’t know the specs, don’t worry. They’re made to work on any computer.

https://southtree.com/dataDVD

Scancafe states it is an extra $199 to get an editable file :
Uncompressed H.264/MPEG-4 Files (1 Drive)
We provide you lightly compressed digital files on a Hard drive that you can edit in a video editing software. If this option is selected, no free DVD/CD set will be recorded.

https://www.scancafe.com/order/video


Am I missing something here? Are they giving vastly different resolutions?

Overall, for the photo I think Scancafe might be better for quality and restorations. You can get the expedited US-only feature now too, which makes the prices about the same.

Thank you
 

edmund

New member
Got an answer from Southtree: Thanks for reaching out to us. Our service focuses on digitizing a large volume of consumer format family media efficiently at an affordable price point. We provide MPEG-4 files, but they are heavily compressed and the videos are usually digitized at around 240p. We do not offer a higher resolution option at this time.

Looks like for the higher quality... Scancafe it is.
 

Rachael Alice

Not Available
As my opinion Scancafe is best as compare to Southtree. Most professional recommend Scancafe to use better image processing. I also personally use Scancafe for my photography.
 
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