Thanksgiving Inspiration

     For Thanksgiving my mom and I visited with my Aunt June (Albea) and cousin, Miranda. After dinner we watched some old home movies that my cousin had brought over. A little backstory: when we were kids my aunt had a camcorder; one of those big ones that recorded directly to VHS and you carried around on your shoulder. We often had sleepovers with our cousins and our aunt would record our antics.

      These movies hold an almost reverent position in our childhood memories. For example, when someone mentions the "Lightning Bug Video" you almost go ahead and start laughing at the thought of just watching the crazy stuff we got up to while trying to catch lightning bugs.  We all swear that if we sent this video to America's Funniest Home Videos, we'd win $10,000 easy.

     But this movie and others are trapped on VHS. I still have a VHS player, but many people don't.  Give it another few years and I might not have one either. I need to get these videos digitized so that they can be watched in the future (and preserved in multiple copies).

     I had tried simply playing the movies on the TV and recording them with a camera but, aside from being a last resort, this simply isn't good enough. So I did some searching and found some software from Roxio called Easy VHS to DVD for Mac. I ordered it from Amazon for $52.99.  In a day or two I should have the software and cables and hopefully can start transferring the old home movies to digital format.

     I'll give an update on my progress then, but until I can get started I'll leave you with a 15 second clip from the "Lightning Bug Video" that I recorded on my phone.