RigidVHS brings your home tapes back to life. A trusted digitization partner handles the physical conversion. KI handles the intelligence — AI chaptering, face matching against your RigidMemory vault, title generation, and sovereign storage. We never touch a tape.
Tape digitization requires specialized equipment and expertise. AI curation requires a different kind of expertise entirely. We partnered with the best physical conversion service so we could focus entirely on what we do — intelligence and sovereignty.
KI never handles your physical tapes. Your tapes go to the digitization partner, your originals come back to you from them, and KI receives only the digital output. We are the AI and sovereignty layer — not the tape handler. This division keeps both services at their best.
Raw digitized video is a file. What KI adds is the intelligence that makes it navigable, searchable, and connected to the rest of your family archive.
Every tape is analyzed for scene changes, setting shifts, and temporal gaps. The AI divides footage into named chapters — "Backyard Birthday, 1994" or "Christmas Morning" — based on visual content. No more scrubbing through two hours of tape to find the moment you remember.
If you have a RigidMemory vault, the face database built from your photos carries directly into RigidVHS. People identified in your photos are automatically recognized in your home videos. The same person, across every medium, connected without manual tagging.
Every chapter gets an AI-generated title based on visual context, detected faces, and temporal metadata. Titles are editable after delivery. The AI does the first pass so you don’t start from a blank label.
After curation, your tape library is searchable by person, approximate year, and chapter title. Find every video containing your grandmother. Find all vacation footage from the 1990s. Your home videos become a database, not a pile of files.
Video chapters are placed on the same timeline as your RigidMemory photo biography. The summer vacation photos from 1989 sit next to the home video from the same trip. Your family history, in every medium, in one chronological archive.
AI identifies the best frames from each chapter — clear faces, good composition, meaningful moments — and exports them as print-ready stills. Your best video moments become photos you can actually print and frame.
RigidMemory + RigidVHS = one connected archive. The face database built during photo processing carries over automatically. Every person identified in your photos is recognized in your videos without additional configuration. Start with RigidMemory, add RigidVHS, and your entire family archive — photos and video — becomes a single searchable, connected, sovereign library.
The digitization partner accepts every major consumer tape format from the last five decades. If you’re not sure what format your tapes are, email us a photo and we’ll identify them.
Full-size VHS cassette. The most common home video format from 1977 through the early 2000s.
1977 – 2003Compact VHS used in handheld camcorders. Plays in a standard VCR with an adapter.
1982 – Early 2000sSony’s consumer camcorder formats. Hi8 offered improved resolution over standard 8mm Video.
1985 – Early 2000sDigital video cassette used in consumer and prosumer camcorders through the mid-2000s.
1995 – 2010s8mm film used in home movie cameras before the video era. Requires film-to-video transfer.
1965 – 1980sSony’s competing VHS format. Rare but fully supported — the quality was actually superior.
1975 – 2016Sony digital video recorded on Hi8-sized tapes. Often contains footage from Hi8 tapes played back on Digital 8 camcorders.
1999 – 2007Email us a photo of your tapes. We’ll identify the format, confirm support, and quote the job.
Ask us →Mail your tapes directly to the digitization partner. We provide the address and instructions. Any format, any quantity.
Professional conversion to high-quality digital video. Quality checked. Your original tapes set aside for return.
Chaptering, face matching, title generation, still frame extraction. We send you a curation summary for review.
Confirm chapter names, correct any titles, approve the output before final delivery. Your approval, your archive.
Michigan hardware with ongoing AI, or a USB drive delivered to your door. Tapes return with your deliverable.
Your original tapes come back. The digitization partner ships your physical tapes back to you along with your deliverable. We never keep originals. You end up with the physical tapes, the digital files, and the curated archive — nothing is held by anyone.
Every RigidVHS job ends with the same decision. Vault It connects your video archive to your photos and keeps everything growing. Deliver It gives you a USB drive and calls it done.
Your curated video archive lives on Michigan hardware alongside your photos. The face database stays connected. New tapes added anytime. Your family archive — every format, every decade — in one sovereign, searchable place.
Best for: families with both photos and tapes, ongoing archive growth, connected heritage
We do the full curation job. You get everything — chaptered, titled, face-matched, still frames extracted — delivered on a USB drive along with your original tapes. No subscription. Done.
Best for: one-time jobs, gifts, customers who just want tapes converted and done
RigidVHS is most powerful when it’s connected. On the Vault It path, your curated video archive sits inside RigidVault alongside your photo biography from RigidMemory. The face database is shared. The timeline is unified. The storage is sovereign.
Start with photos. Add tapes. Add RigidLegacy for estate documents. Every module connects because every module runs on the same Michigan hardware, under the same RigidTrust constitutional framework, governed by the same Nine Bills of Rights.
“Those tapes were recorded by someone who wanted to remember something. The least we can do is make sure the memory is findable.”Read the Nine Bills of Rights →
Email us with a rough count and format of what you have. We’ll confirm support, quote the job, and walk you through getting them shipped. No pressure, no obligation.
shaun@kavanaghind.comKavanagh Industries LLC — Michigan, USA
USPTO Patent Pending #63/991,057
Kavanagh Industries · Always on
