For many of us, they are the items we cherish the most: the old home movies.
Chances are, many of those memories are on film or video - and in the basement ... rotting away.
Most of us have a box like this in the basement or closet .... the best technology we have to date for preserving these memories is to get them to DVD. Most of us have pretty similar stuff ... the Mcmullen family loved the shots around the tree. Little Dave ... loved toys. precious memories that have many this Christmas making basement raids. "Snooped through my parents house and got all their 8mm films from the 70's. And had Bob put them to DVD and music.
Converting the old film to DVD is about 11 cents a foot. that comes to about 200 bucks for two hours of viewing pleasure.
"We can transfer from the small three inch reel one at a time or if spliced together from larger reels can take care of that for an added fee> However if you did what my family did ... and had the old film converted to VHS ... it's a mixed bag of news. Getting it to DVD will only cost about 30 bucks ... but the quality won't be as good. You're better off if you didn't toss the old film ... that exposed your affinity for costumes. Now that you've preserved the goofy memories from the past .. think about this year. When you shoot video this holiday season use a new tape ... and put the camera on the SP setting. You won't get as much time ... but you will get twice the quality. If you're not in a position to preserve memories this year ... don't put it off too long. Old projectors can easily burn the old film ... and VHS tapes were only meant to last 10 - 15 years.
And giving memories as a holiday gift just might rekindle some of that Christmas passion.
Advanced Video in Fairfield is the only place we found in the Tri-state that does the conversion in house ... without mailing the film out of town. you may find others.
I'm told there's still time for Christmas ... but it's first come first served.
One warning .... if you try to view the old film and the projector starts to grab it .. stop ... you're burning the film.
