Newsletter Archives

• Capture basics for video tape

  Posted on July 15, 2024 at 02:43 CDT by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  PERSONAL MEDIA

  

  By Will Fastie

  Video tape was introduced to the US consumer market nearly 50 years ago, in 1976. It created a consumer boom, but the machines that recorded and played video tapes are dying off.

  Worse, support is waning for the technology to get the video off all that old tape and into a digital form more suitable for use today.

  The process is not complicated, once you know a few tricks and have the appropriate hardware and software at hand.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.29.0, 2024-07-15).

  Personal Media Camcorders, Digitization, MiniDV, Newsletters, VCR, VHS, VHS-C, Video 8, Video Capture, Video Tape

• Saving history

  Posted on January 16, 2023 at 02:43 CST by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  PERSONAL MEDIA

  

  By Will Fastie

  Nothing lasts forever. Or does it?

  The readership of this newsletter is old enough to have used, if not embraced, a host of analog technologies for documenting memories. Today we’re taking photos and videos using our omnipresent “phones,” but as recently as two decades ago magnetic tape and film were our primary tools.

  We know this to be true because in our attics, basements, and closets we have trays of 35mm and Instamatic (127) slides. We have strips of black-and-white negatives, and perhaps strips of color negatives. We have boxes of video tapes in Sony Video8, Hi8, Betamax, VHS, VHS-C, and the crossover format MiniDV. We have albums of printed photos. We have quarter-inch audio tapes, cassette tapes, and maybe even the elusive 8-track cartridge format. We may even have vinyl LPs, and older 45s and 78s.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.03.0, 2023-01-16).

  Personal Media Audio, Media, Media Conversion, Newsletters, Photo, Video

• How to digitize your 35mm slides (or, how I did it)

  Posted on October 3, 2022 at 02:43 CDT by Gary Oddi • Comment in the Forums

  PERSONAL MEDIA

  

  By Gary Oddi

  My first retirement project, nearly 20 years ago, was to digitize my 35mm slides — all 11,000 of them.

  I started with flatbed scanners, but they were too time-consuming and too frustrating to set up. Were the slides right side up? Did I have the emulsion side correctly positioned?

  Most of my slides were in Kodak carousels, and many more were in archival trays or plastic slide sheets. It was a pain in the neck to take them out individually, scan them, and put them back — and it took too much time. So, nothing happened. I’ll bet that’s a familiar story.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.40.0, 2022-10-03).

  Personal Media 35mm Slides, Arduino, Digitization, Media Conversion, Newsletters