Thursday, July 28, 2022

Home Movies - JUST DO IT

 

Back at the beginning of the summer I started my summer declutter by tackling my office closet.  On the top shelf of the closet has been this box labeled VHS tapes that I swear my mom gave me when she moved out of their old house back when I was pregnant with Luke.  It MAY have even been before that but either way I've had this box for YEARS and never even looked inside it.  When I was doing the purge I decided it was now or never with 30 tapes and so I started researching various places both online and local who could convert them to digital format for me.



I ended up choosing iMemories because I found a coupon for them online and they sent you a box to package your tapes up in and so I bit the bullet, filled out their forms, boxed everything up and mailed them off.  While some of the tapes were labeled, others had no label on them so it was really a gamble with finding out what was on them - I was hopeful that they'd still be in good shape as well since who knows how long they'd been boxed up.


They received my tapes and sent me an invoice for how many I'd mailed in (you pay by the tape) and after I got it paid (thank you Father's Day Sale!) it took about a week for the videos to start rolling in.  This is a screenshot of what my online "album" looks like... 


... each tape has it's own folder and then the tape has been broken up into different clips.  I can edit each clip on my own as well using this interface... cutting larger clips into smaller, deleting things, etc. 

It took about a week or so until all my files had been uploaded to the online album and it was JUST IN TIME for Father's Day ;) 

My parents had no clue I had this done and my mom said she didn't even remember giving me the tapes - so when they came over for Father's Day we had my laptop hooked up to the TV to show them our pics from NYC and then said something like, "oh! we have one more thing to show you" and pulled up one of the videos.  It took a minute for it to "click" but it was SUCH A FUN SURPRISE!  I shared the login with my parents and brother and we've all had the best time scrolling through and watching the hours and hours of footage.

If you have old tapes I can't encourage you enough to have them digitized!  I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've literally gasped seeing something that I had forgotten about but instantly remembered as soon as I saw it or how special it's been to get to hear my grandparents voices again (I've lost all my grandparents and didn't anticipate getting to hear them!).  Birthdays, family dinners, just regular days at home, high school stuff, vacations... I am FOREVER grateful to have these videos.

I initially thought this was pricy but now that I have the videos I can honestly say that I'd pay twice as much to have these memories.  We ended up with TONS of great videos and footage and here's just a teeny bit to give you an idea...


... see what I mean?!?!  SO SPECIAL!

I got my first month of "storage" on their website free and have paid for a few additional months (I think it was $8/month) to give myself time to get all of them downloaded and stored on an external hard drive and uploaded to my own cloud storage.  The whole process couldn't have been easier and I couldn't be more pleased - if you have any questions let me know in the comments!

9 comments :

  1. This is precious and thank you so much for sharing! We have so many old VHS tapes that are just sitting there. I am going to look into this for a potential Christmas present!

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  2. This is so good to know! Thank you for sharing. Also, why did this make me want to cry? Great choice in the song you picked to accompany the video. Also, I felt like I was watching Griffin- she looks so much like you! I knew that and know you know that, but from the costumes/makeup to the painting and cooking, she is your mini me made over a million times!

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  3. Oh my goodness, I'm not even in your family and that made me cry a little! How special!!

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  4. We did the same thing as a Christmas gift - I can't agree more! We procrastinated forever and in the end, it was so easy! iMemories was great to work with!

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  5. Oh my goodness! At first glance I would've sworn that was Griffin. What a joy to find and re-live these memories!

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  6. Oh my goodness, I can't believe how much Griffen looks like you! And even your brother's kids look just like him!

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  7. Hearing your grandparents' voices again!! That would just be so special.

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  8. THANK YOU so much for this push!!! We recently found some that we had converted years ago and hearing voices of our grandparents was *priceless*. I didn't even know where to start in getting everything digitized. . .I'm so afraid to mail something away!! Anyway, appreciate the post and I'll look into the company you used.

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  9. Absolutley the best gift ever. 🥰

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