The UK's most affordable and flexible MII transfers.
A personal service by an engineer with 20 years of video experience. Transfers to DVD, computer and more.
Costs £35 per tape, extra copies £3.50 or less. Discounts for quantity, and excellent quality.
MII (sometimes incorrectly known as M2 or M11), was introduced in 1986 as Panasonic's answer to Betacam SP. MII tape is a metal formulation, and the cassettes come in two sizes, the larger of which is almost identical to VHS, and the smaller is around 3.6 by 5 inches or 9 by 13 cm. The format failed badly in the market place, but was used for a short time by a few UK television channels as well as videographers as a cheaper alternative to Betacam SP.
Professional MII tapes
(large size on left and small size on the right of this picture).
Just as Betacam SP was an improved version of its predecessor Betacam (itself derived from Betamax), MII was an enhanced of its predecessor, the failed M format (derived from VHS), effectively a case of Beta winning over VHS. Technically, MII is at least equal to Betacam SP, but Panasonic lost out to Sony's Betacam SP format which had already gained a strong foothold in the professional market. Furthermore the machines had a reputation for being somewhat less robust than their Sony competition, and as a result the format lasted only a few years. Tapes may be marked M20S, M60L, M90L.
Basic Menu, £35 per tape: The menus are limited to just a title, but you get a chapter point every 5 minutes so it is easy to move around the DVD. Extra copies of these DVDs cost just £3.50 each and are recommended.
Deluxe Menu £40 per tape: Nice menu icons showing what is on that part of the recording, and if you email me with titles I will put them on the DVD for you too. I place the chapter breaks at points of interest or new recordings. These menus look like professionally recorded DVD films. Extra copies are very cheap, just £2.50 each, and well worth taking.
DVD-ROM £40: Up to 1:30 hours on one DVD-Rom in high quality MPEG2 video files, or up to 20 minutes of DV-AVI file.
Options include transfer to DV AVI format files on hard disk and transfer to miniDV or DVCAM. Just email me for details.
Please note that I cannot handle the earlier M format which may not have even been released in the UK. I do not presently support the NTSC television standard for the MII format.
| PAL | NTSC | |
| YES | NO | |
Just email me with your details and requirements and I'll reply promptly with all the information you require.
(Not yet available for MII: We have a new and easy order page, just select what kind of tapes you have and supply your details.) It's a personal service I offer, not like some of the big video editing houses. I understand that in many cases you will not be able to tell how much material is on the original recordings.
If recorded on equipment from another country, see the Television systems explained. Only PAL recordings are accepted for MII..
Not everyone
needs their tapes returned once they have the DVDs, but if you do, please remember to include postage costs. For a single
video tape in the UK, this is just £2.50 For larger quantities, and tapes from outside the UK, I will let you know.
Ideally can you ensure you send the tapes in a package which is sufficiently large and robust for me to use to send back your original tapes. Usually I will send the DVDs to you ahead of returning your tapes, then when you've confirmed you are happy with the
DVDs, I will return your tapes. This way I can help you further if necessary - for example you can now see you want a different part of a tape transferred on its own or you want extra copies.
The format has only just been introduced so make my day, be my first MII customer and receive a discounted rate....
If you have any questions, just email
me and I'll reply promptly. Also see the video99.co.uk Questions
and Answers (FAQ) All material on
this web site is copyright www.video99.co.uk
and www.colin99.co.uk though trade
marks remain with the manufacturers.
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Last updated 05 October 2009