Two people and too many decks

Tapiko started in 2019 when a broadcast engineer retiring from Latvijas Televizija sold off four studio transports and we could not think of a good reason not to buy them. The name comes from what our first client's grandmother called any cassette she could not identify.

We are Marta, who does the film gate and the paperwork, and Ilja, who keeps the transports aligned and argues about time-base correctors on forums at unreasonable hours. There is no third employee and no plan to hire one.

Why we do it this way

Most bulk transfer services capture into a lossy codec, discard the tape's field structure, and hand you an MP4 with the audio drifting by the end of the second hour. That is fine until it is the only surviving copy of someone's wedding. We keep a lossless master because the cheap part of this job is disk space and the expensive part is a tape you only get to play well once.

Equipment, briefly

• Panasonic NV-HS1000 and AG-7350 (VHS, S-VHS)
• Sony EVO-9650 and a serviced CCD-V800 (Video8, Hi8)
• Sony DSR-11 over FireWire (DV, DVCAM)
• For.A FA-125 time-base corrector
• Bauer T610 with a replaced gate and shutter, 5 MP global-shutter sensor

Visiting

By appointment only, Tuesday to Friday, roughly 11:00 to 18:00. The building has no lift and the room is on the third floor, so tell us in advance if that is a problem and we will come down to meet you.