Carson video firm a top duplicator

More than a hundred machines work away in absolute synchronization in their racks, magnetically aligning metal oxide particles that wind past spinning recording heads.

At a silent electronic signal, the ganged video recorders all stop and stick out their tape cassettes like plastic tongues with a sound like the clatter of troops called to attention.

Then human hands take over, gathering up the completed duplicate tapes to be labeled and shipped, then feeding stacks of blanks back into the recorders for the next batch.

AGM, a Carson City video production company that has cultivated a reputation for high quality in the videos it creates, has become one of the busiest videotape duplicators in the West by combining quality duplication services with aggressive pricing, according to owner Michael Grimes.

"Those 1-800 ads you see on late-night television? Each station needs a customized version of the commercial with its own telephone number, because the station gets a cut from each sale and the vendor needs to track them," Grimes explained. "So we duplicate the basic commercial about 435 times, superimposing the right 1-800 number on each tape. And each product has a different set of 435 1-800 numbers."

Another group of customers is companies that distribute video tapes to their clients for training or product promotional purposes.

"There's West Coast Taekwondo in California - every time a student of theirs moves up a belt level, they give him a new tape with training for the next one," Grimes said.

"Bently Nevada needs tapes to give their clients about how to operate and maintain their equipment. Because they sell all over the world, we now know how to edit, duplicate and label in virtually every language."

Gray Matter, a Douglas County company that makes and sells educational videos such as "World of Geometry," is another regular customer.

Then there's Richard Hamzik, the Gardnerville integrated circuit consultant making a bid for the U.S. Senate. As he makes his campaign rounds, Hamzik is handing out short videos to introduce himself and his platform. AGM produced the campaign video and made the duplicate tapes.

The company, nearly anonymous in a Hot Springs Road commercial center, started with a bank of 30 video recorders to produce copies of its own productions or for other businesses that needed multiple copies. Demand was steady, so AGM added 90 more industrial-grade VHS recorders about 18 months ago.

They joined several other machines that handle other standards such as SECAM, PAL, 3/4-inch cartridges used by television stations and even wide reel-to-reel tape.

"We're ordering the VHS tapes by pallets of 2,000," Grimes said. The operation went through 21 pallets over the past year.

"We actually buy a higher grade of tape than other duplication operations use, because of who we are. Because we're mainly video producers, we want our images - and the images of our customers - to look great. We hate it when we see a dropout in a video," he said.

A dropout is a flaw caused when the magnetic coating of a tape fails, so no video signal is stored at that point on the tape. "The tapes most duplication houses use have 15 times as many dropouts as our tape does."

Though the Carson operation is physically small, Grimes said the systems AGM has developed to efficiently duplicate, label and package tapes has kept it competitive with large duplicators.

"I don't really price in relation to the big guys. But I did check the pricing for a large duplicator out of Las Vegas. Our prices were lower for every option and quality combination," he said.

The company prefers to handle duplication runs of 10 to 5,000 copies, he said. Runs of fewer than 10 copies become too expensive because of set-up costs. Larger runs are referred to one of the high-volume duplicators whose quality Grimes trusts.

"We don't make anything when we send those jobs somewhere else, but what we do is make sure anyone who comes to us is taken care of right. We've learned through experience who's best at anything video-related, so we'll send people where they'll get quality service," he said.

"We've become kind of a one-stop shop for anything video-related, even if we don't do it ourselves and don't make any money off if it. But you never know whether that person you helped might walk in the door a few years later needing a training video produced."

AGM began about seven years ago as Anderson Grimes Melton, with Charlie Anderson handling engineering duties and Darren Melton doing camera work and some editing. Grimes, the owner, focuses on directing, producing and editing.

After all, duplication is mostly a sideline to AGM's production of industrial and promotional videos. For most of the second week of July, the team was busy at several locations shooting product testimonials for a client. The video editor, Kristina Connolly, will be busy assembling the scenes at her computerized editing console.

The company's investment in equipment includes an $80,000 system that can assemble up to 50 layers of video into one shot.

But AGM has made another type of investment. Grimes regularly assists Carson High School's video production program run by Brian Reedy. And AGM takes on budding local videographers as interns.

"We hope that, out of over 100 students in the video program each year, there's one or two with a love for video who we can bring on here," he said.