There are many reasons to transfer your family’s cherished media such as video tapes, photos, slides and film to a more modern, accessible format like DVD. Not only will transferring allow you to view your media at any time, it also preserves your family videos, photos and film to prevent any further degradation!
Here are some of the top ten reasons it is beneficial to transfer your important family memories, NOW!
10. Simplify Your Media
With the changes in media technology, it’s now cheaper and easier than ever to get your old video tapes converted to DVD, photos scanned, and film digitized. Nearly all work is now captured directly into a computer’s hard drive, which allows for relatively easy manipulation of your video, images and audio with no quality loss from the original. You can also upload your footage to a cloud storage system, or video sharing site like Youtube and have peace of mind that your videos will always be safe.
9. Production and Editing
With advancements in technology propelling us to the ‘digital era’, producing quality media from the comfort of your own home or office is now a reality. Once your media is digitized, nearly anything is possible! Things like putting together a new digital scrapbook, creating a graduation slideshow for your children, or even a new commercial for your business are now easier than ever before. Gone are the days of people having to pay outrageous production fees in order to create professional videos.
8. Celebrating a Special or Corporate Event
Do you have a special event planned in the near future? Would you like to create a San Diego custom slideshow or video montage to incorporate into an event? For the next party or get-together, instead of relying on the old slide projector or Powerpoint presentation, you can show off your fully-edited custom slideshow movie for everyone to enjoy. This is a great way to show off your latest product or idea, while getting everyone in attendance involved.
7. Portability
It’s usually true that the newer gadgets and technology of today are getting smaller and smaller — The newer they are, the smaller they get. This can even apply to most media formats throughout history. Just think about how much easier it would be to scan your old 35mm slides, condensing your many carousels of slides onto a single thumb drive. As for video tapes, VHS tapes were the standard for several years until laser discs and DVDs hit the market. As many people know, the more VHS tapes you owned, the more storage space you needed to allocate to them. When digitized however, you can save a remarkable amount of space. Instead of holding onto hundreds of old VHS tapes, you transfer them to some easy to maintain DVDs or even to hard drive to save more space.
6. Entertainment
Reflecting on past events can be entertaining for the whole family! It’s always a treat to catch a glimpse of your vacation from years ago, and re-live the time you spent there. This is also great for family get-togethers or parties especially if multiple people attending are featured on the video! If you decide to go with a video transfer to hard drive, you can do some simple or advanced editing to create a new video for everyone to enjoy. Professionally edited videos make great holiday gifts!
5. Reconnecting With Lost Friends & Family
15 Years ago, you and your friend may have taken a video camera on that awesome trip to Europe. As time goes on, people change locations, and connections are missed or often lost. Without watching that video today, you may never ask yourself, what happened to this person? Where can I find them? Not only is it much easier these days to transfer your media, it’s also become much easier to find and locate people! Sometimes a little reminder is all you need.
4. Family Time
Everyone has busy schedules with school, work, football practice, church, etc. and often, time spent with your own family is overlooked. Once your media is digitized, it provides a great opportunity to spend and share time with family or close friends. People can relate to what they’re watching and can spark up some interesting discussions of the past, and connect with new friends.
3. Technology Changing
Technology is constantly evolving into “smaller” and better things. A closet full of old videos can now be placed onto a plastic drive the size of your thumb and your desk drawer full of photos can now be replaced with archival-grade DVDs. Now that most of the older formats are obsolete and often difficult to see or watch, it’s best to get them digitized sooner than later. As time drags on, it will only start to get more difficult to obtain the equipment needed to perform the video transfer, or image scanning that is right for you.
2. Degradation and Deterioration
During the 80’s and 90’s, most of us were under the assumption that our precious memories stored onto magnetic tape would be safe forever. Recently, however, more and more people are realizing that this is simply not the case. Magnetic tape is great for short term play back of our fondest memories, or to relive a historic event. Video tapes deteriorate every year even if you don’t view them. Your precious memories painstakingly caught on tape WILL someday be unplayable. Most VHS tapes, with proper care, can last up to 20 years with only minor degradation issues. However, since VHS tapes have been obsolete for nearly 10 years now, the timeline is running thin! If you want these images to last, it’s best to get the VHS transfer to DVD done now, before it’s too late. DVDs can last you hundreds of years with absolutely no degradation, as the laser never makes direct contact with the disc itself. I’ve seen where people have, unfortunately, waited a bit too long to get their tapes transferred, and as a result they’re left with a fraction of what they once had.
1. Archiving/Preservation
Due to the threat of media degradation, preserving your family’s memories is very important. Older media types, such as slides and video tapes, were never designed or meant to last forever. It has now become much easier to archive your tapes and images by simply capturing them to a hard drive or DVD. While most consumer DVDs typically last anywhere from 5-10 years, there are a few high-grade brands that will last you 100 or more years with proper care. Virtually all recordings from the last 40 years are in jeopardy, whether it be unique mastered audio recordings or news broadcasts. No tape is safe from the multiple threats that range from physical loss due to disaster, accidental erasure, or the increasing disappearance of equipment needed to play them back. Realistically, most of the inventory of tapes are duplicates of other materials, but many others are originals, masters, or unique content that cannot be easily duplicated. The amount of tapes needed to be restored is so huge, that it would take decades, even if facilities, techniques, and funding were readily available.
If you have any questions regarding the media transfer service, give us an email: info@dvdyourmemories.com