Do you still want to convert your old VHS tapes to DVD?

If so, you’re normal! Most families have old VHS and other media hidden away in the closet or garage. There are reasons for this! Sometimes folks are afraid to send them for VHS to DVD conversion through the mail to some foreign place like Alabama or China.  And sometimes tapes are just stored away and forgotten, or are somewhere at grandma’s house and just lost for now. Whatever the reason, it is important that you hold onto those old memories and transfer your videos to digital.

VHS to DVD?

A friend of mine just lost his house the fire in Calimesa. He had seconds to get out. He watched his house go up in smoke on the local news. We are all sad. We are happy he is alive! Thank God.

I helped another friend prepare to get out just in case the wind changed. We made plans to save all of her important papers, family history (stuffed in a bin), and some clothes and other important items. As the fire died down the stress died with it. She is safe and didn’t need to leave.

The point of the story!

As I write this, I thought about her family history bin. If she transferred her family media to USB or to the cloud or better yet both, she would not have to worry so much about saving her family history in an emergency.

Contrast that to my other friend that lost his house. He is a family history buff.  He had only seconds to get out.  He didn’t have time to grab anything except his wife and mother and leave. He lost all of his family history media, photos, video, film, and journals.

My first friend had time to save her media, but my second friend’s media is lost forever.

I share these stories not to scare you as the reader, but to help you understand that things happen and sometimes they happen fast. Sometimes we have zero control.

VHS to DVD or any other media to DVD is good, but this is why I suggest the 3-2-1 rule for media preservation.

3-2-1 Rules for Media Preservation

Here is the rule:

3 – Copies of your media:

Have more than one copy of your media. It sounds basic because it is. Every photo, video, film or audio recording is a masterpiece. Your media can never be recreated or replaced. Make copies of everything. I had a customer bring me DVD’s that contained all of their family movies from around 2006. They made copies and sent them to family around the USA. In 2018 they came to me with their DVDs and explained that the DVDs are no longer working properly. They can’t watch any of them. DVDs are supposed to last 100 years or more, but there is no guarantee that the data on them will be readable for that long. It was a timely process, but we were able to extract about 80% of their data from the DVDs. Hence our second rule…

2 – Different type of media:

Make sure the copies you have are o  more than one type of media. DVDs are good, so are USB/ Thumb drives, and external hard drives, and cloud storage. But which one is the best? The right answer is all of them. They all have pros and cons.

The cloud is a great storage solution. The cloud has multiple servers so everything is backed up. Your files are easily accessible if you have the Internet. If you have a natural disaster in your local area your files are stored around the country and even the world. Cloud storage is a monthly paid service. Depending on the amount of data you have it is the more costly option for the long term.

USB/ Thumb drives and external drives are also great solutions. There are a variety of drive sizes and they work with all computers that have a USB connection. Some systems are connected via your local internet system. There are two basic drive systems 1 – HDD or spin drives and 2 – SSD or solid state drives. The HDD have moving parts and can have issues if they are not used very often. If you placed one in the safe and tried to use it 20 years from now it might not work. The SSD drives include your basic USB or Thumb drive as well as other styles of external drives. These have no moving parts, but have other limitations such as write capabilities and chip malfunctions. Also you have to have the USB or external drive connected to your computer to watch the media.

DVDs are dinosaurs at this stage of the media storage game. Once they were cheap and easy to transfer media to, but today more computers are available without DVD drives. The advantage of a DVD was that you could put it in a DVD player and watch your videos. Some disadvantages are that DVDs are limited on size and they are still a physical disc that has to be physically stored and moved from place to place. More and more customers are seeing the advantage of USBs over DVDs. But both formats have advantages and disadvantages.  The point is have your copies on more than one type of media.  And then check them periodically to make sure they’re still functioning!

1 – Outside of your house:

Have extra copies of your media outside your home. My friend that just lost his house had no time to gather any of his effects. He literally ran for his life!  The only hope he has of recovering any of his media memories is if he saved any to the internet or shared copies with his family outside of the home. The best way to preserve the family story is sharing your media with friends and family.

Short on siblings? Think about kids and grand kids, nieces and nephews, cousins and extended family. I hear all the time “My kids don’t care about this stuff!” Many kids don’t care now but one day they will.  Life happens and things change. Family and relationships become more important.  They want to know where they came from and who are their ancestors? Don’t worry if they don’t care now – just have your old media ready for when they do care.

VHS to DVD?

If you haven’t transferred your old media over to digital yet, that is okay. We help you make transferring media easy.

Check our pricing here.

We do all of your video transfers in our Redlands office or at our film lab in the Inland Empire.

If you have any questions please feel free to call/ or text me at 909-793-3575.