Original Wedding VHS tape
13 11 2004Brenden and I discovered that any VHS tape that have been used and/or recorded at least once and whether we have viewed it often or never used it again for years, all VHS tape will begun degrade itself after minimally 15 years . It’s pretty normal for life average for VHS tape.
http://www.jakeludington.com/convert-vhs/
Video tape wears out over time: Nothing you can do will prevent your video tapes from wearing out.
Most VHS tapes wear out somewhere after only 10-15 years even if you don’t watch them.
Converting VHS movies to DVD helps add more life to the original tape, while also preserving your investment.
As you know, nobody would dream CD/DVD will come out thinner and better than VHS tape in 80’s. Misty and I collected a lot of family-oriented and Disney VHS movies – we have over 100 of them in our living room! What are we going to do with them? Back them up before they get worst? Backup whole 100 tapes? I don’t think so.
Right now, I am going focus on personal such as wedding, children, family and all that stuff as our 1st priority. First thing that comes in my mind is our wedding tape. We only have one original tape which we got married on January 30, 1988. That’s over 15 years ago – yikes!
First thing I did is purchase 10 new blank VHS tapes. They cost me only $15 for whole 10 tapes at Fry’s store. I copied it from original tape to blank tape. Then I stored original tape back in tape box and leave it alone for time being. I am going use backup tape as experiment since I really want to transfer it into my hard drive via TV tuner and VCR/DVD player.
I have this old ATI Radeon All-in-Wonder video card (with TV tuner and other stuff in it) few years ago and it still runs good. I hooked it up with my $49 VCR/DVD player and it works great. I successfully copied my 57 minutes worth of time from wedding tape. Quality is pretty good too.
Based on ATI software, it converted into mp2 format which is very good. Then I used a program called Ulead DVD Factory 2.0 (within Ulead MediaStudio 7.0) and converted wedding mp2 format into DVD quality format with menu, title, chapters, etc.
It took me a while to get familiar with this program. There are many possibilities in it like you can add-on music, photos, PowerPoint, etc into video. Very powerful tools. Anyway, I finally learned its way out and created my very first wedding into DVD!
I tested it with my regular DVD player with TV and laptop with DVD-ROM, it runs very well. Unfortunately, I must have forgotten about sounds. My daughter told me it sound like I was using AIM opening & closing and other clicking in it.
Sigh! I need to go back and re-do it – I need to re-modify sound setting somewhere. I wish I don’t have to do it but I want to preserve it for my kids and everyone else.
I will let you know how I did it next time!
Grant W Laird, Jr.
http://blog.grantlairdjr.com
I would stick with DVD-R digital camera in future.
There was an article recently in the paper about that. But won’t DVDs also disintegrate in the long run? Also, doesn’t the quality of videotapes decrease with every transfer?
I have about 20 tapes I need to transfer to DVD, too, but I don’t have the equipment (or time
) for it. Sigh - one of the tapes has 8mm film from when my dad and mom were in college, me as a baby (in 1975 and so on), and many of my now deceased relatives. I really want to transfer that to DVD ASAP just in case.
YIKES! I will have to do something with the VHS… I am glad I brought a lot of Disney DVD for my children.
I will have to figure out what to do with the VHS.
Let me know how did you do with yours.
Dave:
DVD-R isn’t always reliable. You can step on it and crack it. Sayonara.
DV tapes or high quality 8mm tapes are fine and will not degrade as much over time as VHS will.
Y’all:
You may still want to do backups to DVD or other formats as much as possible.
It doesn’t hurt to make DVD’s out of those videos and have fun with your DVD player too! Check out DVD Movie Factory.
Brenden
Yup. I already transferred these 8mm films (which were from 1968-1976) over to videotape. So that’s not a problem for me (and I have several copies). But I want to transfer them TO DVD…that’s the thing.
Brenden is right, tho.
All you need to do DVDs are a DVD-Writer. I can’t recall if you have a Mac or a PC? If you have a PC I know how to explain it all to you.
If it’s a Mac, well, I’m out of that one. Does someone out there want to donate a Mac to us?
Brenden
Wow - I had no idea that videotape was so fragile! Scary (and good to know!)