Family Film and Video Digitizing

by Peter Poggi
(Gaithersburg, MD)

I found what I think is a great indoor hobby, especially for cold winters and pandemic restrictions.

I decided to go through all the family 8mm films and VHS tapes and transfer them to a more time-durable, digital format.

Rather than use a service I did some (several hours) online research and decided that I would "DIY" it! Several advantages to doing it myself:

I wanted to...

.. clean the films of mold and dirt prior to converting. The services won't do this.

.. sequence them by date.

.. add written text like names, dates, places to the videos

.. I really needed something to do between my volunteer EMT shifts!

I've only invested less than $450 in equipment, borrowed a VHS player, and learned to use several different free video editing and formatting products.

Doing it myself has put me in touch with old friends and relatives, and in my opinion has yielded much better results for a lot less expense.