The holidays are upon us: the frantic time of the year when you are just cleaning up from a Thanksgiving meal, planning family time, swapping out decorations, and shopping for gifts. Okay, Okay, don’t get upset with me for reminding you how stressful this time of year is, but I do have a question for you…
What type of gift do you give to someone that means more to them than anything money can buy? Well, my friend, the answer is two-fold, a well thought out gift that is made specifically for them. It could be made by your hands or by someone else’s, but the idea is that is made for them, as well as a gift that speaks to their heart. This type of gift is worth more than gold when given as one made with your own hands.
Have I intrigued you enough to find out what the gift should be and how to get it? I hope so!
The gift I am referring to is the gift of remembering the good times of the past. Yes, the memories of yesterday that you have heard shared many times. Now, if your family is like mine, I am referring to the telling of days “Way Back When”and not the pranks, snarkiness, and noogies (which are all fun and part of having a loving family), then you more than likely have videos and home movies stashed away in the attic or garage.
This is what you do. Dig out those old tapes, and blow the dust off of the boxes they are in. Find an old VCR. Goodwill, eBay, and yard sales will still have these if you don’t have one. Then click on this link to purchase the VIDBOX Video Conversion Suite.
If you have the small VHS-C cassettes then you will need a VHS-C Cassette Adapter to play them in the VCR. However, if you have tapes that are small and say “Hi-8mm” then you will need
to have a video camera that will play these types of tapes. This is where Goodwill, eBay and yard sales are needed again.
The VIDBOX comes with a small box that connects composite (Red White, and Yellow “RCA”) video sources (VCRs and old cameras) to it and then the box connects to your computer.
Once you have installed the software onto your computer, it walks you through the process of starting the recording. Be sure to allow time for the videos to play through. The process can be quite long if you have many tapes. Now once the videos are recorded onto your computer, you can then use a DVD authoring program to create menus and custom backgrounds for when played on a DVD player. This process we will go over soon in another post.
Right now I want to get you thinking about where those old “home movies” are that you used to dread having to sit through as a child and beginning the first steps of converting them to digital. Did you see what just happened? In 450 words or less you just learned how to digitize your old VHS tapes. Think about the joy that you will bring to your loved ones when they get this gift that you have made with your hands for them specifically.
There are many fun ways that you can make this interesting and I hope that you will follow along on this journey and found out just what we mean by this. In the mean time, lets get “digital.”
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