Digital Pickle

In short, they took $ 70.85 and didn’t do any work in return. I had asked for a photo be restored — just fix the scratches, boost the constrast, fairly simple stuff. They asked me to send the photo and they would give me an estimate. I sent it in, they reviewed it, and then sent me a bill. I paid the bill and then dropped the photo off. The estimate was 2 – 3 weeks, so I waited over 3 weeks and contacted them. «Yes, it’s ready, go and pick it up. «
I was supposed to get an 8X10 print of my restored photo as well as a copy of it on disk. What I got was what looked like an enlarged photocopy of my picture with every scratch and every blemish still there — it also looked exactly the same with no work done on it at all. I could have done this in 1 minute with my photocopier at work! I got home and checked the disk that I was given. It said «Scanned Photo» on the disk. So I put in the disk, hoping to find my restored photo. But guess what? The disk is blank!
So seriously: what did I pay for? I emailed the company but they never responded. I guess my biggest mistake was paying in advance. Avoid this place!

I had some old slides scanned by these guys and it was a very positive experience. Same day turnaround, and their prices were *less than half* of 3 other places I called.

Just before giving my DVD to someone as a present I realized that the second transfer wasn’t done correctly either. Back to Digital Pickle…

I would seriously suggest trying every other option first. I have been trying for months to get my videos transferred. They said they would call me when done and never did. Then told me tapes were done and waiting for a long time. I brought in an internal drive for transfer. They have no equipment for an internal drive (and no eSata support for external drives). I had to provide them with a $ 25 external bay for internal drive. Finally, got my tapes back and files had no names associating with the tapes. Called in and was told there were stickers with numbers associated with file numbers. No one ever explained this. Then found some transfers were done incorrectly. Took them back to have those re-​done. Their PAL conversion equipment is in Berkeley, so it’s taking them additional weeks to correct my order. Sean, the technician, is unprofessional (doesn’t call when he’s supposed to; unapologetic for their shortcomings; makes no effort to correct or rush; hung up on me when I nicely asked if this could be done a day ealier (4 more days instead of 5); blamed me for delays when I was never notified of order completion). Sometimes, when they take your videos (since I’ve had go back repeatedly), they don’t even think of asking for your name or any identification with them. Frightening.
In short, this place is run very unprofessionally. Taking your valued memories there is risky.

What more could you ask for! Excellent work (finished ahead of schedule), great staff, parking-​friendly location, low price. Found with the help of Unilocal,I needed a shop to convert old slides to disc/​pix. Highly recommend as an everything-​you-​could-​hope-​for business.

Came across Digital Pickle, when I was in a bit of a pickle myself. Planning my wife’s 40^th birthday, I wanted to create a slideshow with 20+ years worth of pictures. As the days drew closer, I still had a slew of photos to scan (~140), integrate them with 115+ digital images, and put it all to music. So I called over to Digital Pickle to see if they could throw me a life jacket.
Samantha answered my call and was extremely patient describing the viability of my plan, the options available, and how much it would cost. When I dropped off all of the materials, I had the pleasure of working directly with her as she took on the project, personally.
While being completely up front about the challenge it would be to complete it in the remaining time, Samantha also said that she would do everything she could to try and make it happen.
She worked diligently to get me a draft of the slideshow and then was still able to take my additional edits and requests and incorporate them too. I am ecstatic about the finished product, and it was the highlight of the birthday.
Hats off to Digital Pickle and especially Samantha for saving the day!

Unfortunately, the fine folks at Video Transfer Center no longer transfer… video. Film only is their thing now.
They referred me to Digital Pickle, but I do think I’d try another place next time… Video Transfer Center always went out of their way to put titles and information on the DVDs they created for me from miniDVs
…it wasn’t until I was on my way to pick up my Digital Pickle DVD that I realized they hadn’t asked me anything about the project or whether I wanted any of the content marked in any way… I guess my bad for not bringing it up, but I was so used to VTC really caring about what I submitted and leading me through the process so that I got something special… oh well. Next.

Easy to work with, straightforward services. Placed converted files on my portable harddrive, super easy to import to iDVD and burn copies of the digitized movies with others.

I came here because I bought a 50% off Groupon to get my VHS tapes transferred to DVD.
They gave me an estimate for approximately how long it would be before I could come pick them up. When the day arrived and I’d received no call, I gave them a call to ask if my order was ready. Before even asking for my name, the guy said my order wasn’t ready. He clarified later that he had seen my name on the caller ID and that’s how he knew who I was, but it was very awkward and unprofessional.
Anyway, along with the long wait, I come to find out that the quality of my DVDs were horrible. 4 of my 6 DVDs are almost inaudible and 5 of them skip and freeze up in the middle.
At first I thought it was cool that they had labeled the DVDs according to original labels on the VHS tapes but they managed to screw that up too. ALL 6 tapes were labeled incorrectly. HORRIBLE.
SO, I will never ever ever return to Digital Pickle. Some advice — hit up «A Foto Video Mail & More» on Mission/​21^st. They charge $ 20 per transfer as well but the quality is MUCH BETTER.

Brought in about 5 minutes of VHS tape to be converted into a .mov file.
They did a terrific job, and had it for me slightly ahead of schedule.
I’d use this place again in a second… although the extra $ 5.00 fee was a bit annoying for a «processing» fee or what not, but overall, they are incredibly affordable and I give them two very high thumbs up.

Good turnaround times and decent prices. First scans I got were economy-​quality for a last-​minute slideshow, so scratches and misalignment were fine– they finished the job in record time.
Second time however, I sprung for the more expensive standard-​quality scans which should include CleanScan/​Digital ICE to remove dust and scratches, but there are major dust particles on almost every image, about half of which are not present on the photos themselves.

With my wedding away in a couple months, my buddy that’s preparing our slideshow suggested that I get some old childhood videos. I asked my parents about it, and apparently they had some old Kodak Super 8 film reels that they had from my first birthday that I had no idea existed! With three reels in hand (total run time of around 10 minutes), I did some research on how to get these things digitized, and I stumbled upon
. The website looked great, and they sounded like they knew what they were doing. (To be fair, there seem to be a lot of companies out there that do this work, and some of their websites sound compelling too, but with Digital Pickle about 2 miles away from where I lived, it was the most convenient for me.)
I was a little taken back by the reviews I read on Unilocal as there seemed to be some negative experiences, but I noticed how they were very good about following up with displeased customers, so at least I knew their customer service was active. I figured I’d give them a try.
They took my film, gave me a quote of how much it would cost (about 25 cents per foot of film, comes out to around $ 60 bucks including a $ 15 dollar charge and tax), and said that it would be ready in about a week.
Exactly one week later, I received a call that the order was ready, went to pick them up, and found, much to my surprise that the film reels were of not only my first birthday, but also of my parents’ wedding, which I had never seen. The quality of the transfer was very reasonable, and it had that old 8 mm film look that looked simply awesome compared to today’s HD stuff (which is awesome in it’s own right).
Be warned, if you want to do audio, it’ll cost an additional 25 cents per foot, so your cost will double if there’s audio!
Nevertheless — I was very pleased with the transaction. They got me what I requested, the quality was very good, they were precise about when it would be done, and the quoted price was accurate.
Now I’m asking my parents if they have any other old 8 mm film reels, and if they do, I’ll be bringing them back to Digital Pickle for digitizing!

Did a fantastic job of restoration and digitizing of very old family photos. They salvaged images that we thought were a total loss. Very impressive work. Every precious pic is now on disk for the generations to enjoy.

I should say I also went to Digital Pickle to get a mother load of negatives and slides (almost a thousand) to be transferred digitally. It was a huge order, and they did it in two weeks. It would have taken me at least a year if I did it on my own spare time.
Results ranged from great to uneven, almost as if my order had been done by two different people (?), but when it was good, it was very good. Some slides from the 80’s looked like they were shot yesterday (a testament to both Ektachrome and Digital Pickle).
At worst, some slides or negs had a hair on them (kinda unforgivable, but on so few, not worth picking a fight about), and some dust on whole batches, but overall dust was not bad. There were scratches on a percentage of my negs (from poor storage on my part) which, while still there, seemed to have been minimized.
Overall, happy with what they did. They had a LOT to do to complete my order — so I know it must have been a grind to complete what was just a line item on a long list of orders.
One gripe would be that they make it more clear that they save images as JPEGs rather than TIFFs (as Photoworks in the Castro does). It’s probably there in plain print on the order, but I wish it were verbalized I guess.
NOTE: I do know that they read these reviews, since I got a discount for my ‘trouble.’ I said, what trouble? And the tech said with a smirk, «Well, we know you weren’t too happy with your 8 mm transfer» (I never complained to them, only here on Unilocal).
I appreciate that they took care of me here with the price and made an extra effort to produce good results for me. I got the sense that she was the one who finished up my order and did the better quality work on my scans at the end. Like any business, they probably have both their clock-​punchers and people who care about doing a good job, so I think I got a little of both on my order.
From now on, I will request that she alone do my stuff. :)

The owner contacted me after my review to apologize and explain that they were upgrading their computers during my visit and their turnaround limitations were not clearly communicated to the staff. Therefore, I’m upgrading my experience to OK as it could have just been bad timing, and I appreciate that the owner reached out.

This company did not meet any expectations in terms of quality or customer service.
I was converting 8 mm videos to dvd for my parents for Christmas. Digital Pickle did not even process my order before Christmas after promising I could pick it up on Christmas eve. They hadn’t even started and didn’t even apologize.
When they did fulfill the order, the quality was terrible. I ended up buying my own equipment and doing it at home. The videos came out 100% better.
Too bad b/​c it’s a time consuming project.

Third time I’ve used them.
(8mm film to digital files)
Not happy about a couple of things–
1. Hidden charges. They dinged me with $ 40 in ‘original reel fees’. You wouldn’t know about the ‘original reel fee’ until you were charged for it. They don’t tell you they’re going to splice all of your films together onto one reel. They do that for _​their_​convenience. But YOU pay the charge to get the film back on the original reels. That’s shifty business.
2. Tell your customers when the cost exceeds the estimate.
They charged me more than what my order showed. In addition to the reel fee, there were additional charges accrued during the processing. It was a rude surprise after the fact.
The company is expanding, but they may getting bigger, not better.
I originally gave them 4 stars, then 3, now 2.

I sent in about 2000 feet of 8 mm bw, and 8 mm and super 8 color film. Much from the 1940’s and 50’s. I previewed it before sending so I knoew what to expect.
They received my order on Monday November 3^rd. and they confirmed the order and the 2 week turn around. They completed the transfer to my external Hard drive and shipped on there promised date of November 17. I have since reviewed the digital transfer on my external WD hard drive masfer and am pleased wit the results. I was impressed that they sent me emails confirming the shipping and they even adjusted the cost so the final cost was actually $ 20.00 less that I had estimated. The technician who did the transfer called me and explained some of the problems he had with getting good exposures on the really old film that had darkened with age. I was aware of it but it was worth a try.
I am pleasantly surprised at the quality of the images, they did a good job of cleaning the film and adjusting the expsoure as much as they could for the dark film sections.
I would recommend them to anyone who want a true AVI digital transfer of there movie film. This isn’t the quick and cheap dvd transfer. It cost more but you have real editable digital video that you can create a great final product from or make dvd dircetly from and move to something else at a later date.
Jim

These guys were recommended to me by the Bay Area Video Coalition. I wish I could give them more stars. My main complaint is about service and communication with regards to the order I placed.
I dropped off some old family films for transfer onto DVD.
When I picked them up, I was told that some of the orders could not be completed. I completely understand if certain transfers are not within a company’s specialty or practice. What did not seem right was, ‘why didn’t I get a call about it?’.
Even on the day I was to pick up my order, I had to call twice and send an e-​mail to finally be able to get an answer.
The DVD of my old family photos was just alright. No particular effort had been made to make a logical sense of the sequence. Just random transfers one after the other.
Additionally, without asking, they took all of my films and spliced them together onto two giant reels.
I am also not sure about the footage fees. I paid over $ 100 for a 43 minute disc.
I don’t think I would go back.

Just got back a DVD packed with 700 family photos and the quality is excellent. The DVD contains JPG images of the original scans as well as the final corrected/​optimized images. The files were organized into folders exactly as I had asked.
You can see the results here:
Overall, I am very happy with the quality of the scans and the service they provided. I would definitely recommend them to anyone hoping to create large archives of historical family photo albums.