Digitizing Old Home Movies: The Gift of Memories that Never Made Your List… Until Now!

By: Maureen Thorne, Guest Author

The Struggle to Find the Perfect Gift for My Parents

It’s the time of year for me to put together my Gift List. And every year, it is more and more difficult to figure out what to get for my parents. They are in their 70s and have what they need. When I ask them what they want, they just say, “We don’t need anything. Just get us a gift card to go out to dinner”.

Well, not wanting to give what I consider to be a boring gift, every year I must wrack my brain to come up with something good so they can have an enjoyable morning, unwrapping something unexpected and unique (or at least not lame).

Percolating the Parental Present Idea

A few years ago, I remembered they had a huge box of old home movies – in a variety of formats: VHS, 8 mm, Super 8, and more. Videos they had taken in the early days of the home video camera – from the late 1960s and early 1970s through to the mid-1990s; long before today’s always-available cell phones that allow us to easily record every moment and share instantly. 

As kids, we had a film projector and would pull out some of those old films to watch them on a white wall in the basement. We’d laugh and make fun of the loud 70s clothes and hairstyles. And my parents and grandmother would chastise us because they thought they had looked good.

Back to the gift idea for my parents… I realized that no one had been able to watch these precious home movies for decades. I thought it would be amazing if I could get these videos converted so that we could watch them on the big screen TV and share them with extended family. That would be the perfect gift that would be lauded as such for years to come!

Stealth and Execution of the Consummate Gift Mission

So, I secretly dug them out of my parents’ basement and absconded with them, while my husband played zone defense by keeping my parents distracted in the kitchen. When I got home, I realized that the consummate Gift Mission may not come to fruition as it was not as easy and convenient as I thought it would be to find video transfer services.

Luckily, I came across Annex Photo Concept by Fujifilm in Toronto; they specialize in transferring a wide variety of old video formats into MP4 files compatible with today’s technology – Smart TVs, computers, social media, YouTube, etc. 

Even though I’m not too far from Toronto, I thought it might be easier and quicker for me to just mail or courier the home videos to them. So, I contacted them to request a quote for my box of 18 assorted films and tapes for video transfer and then packed and shipped them to Annex Photo.

The Joy of the Digitizing Home Movies Extended Far Beyond the Recipients

Within a few short weeks, I had a USB with hours of video footage from the Video and Photo Preservation Experts at Annex Photo. Not knowing what was actually on many of those old home video tapes and films, I gathered my husband and kids, plugged the USB into the Smart TV, and we started watching. My parents’ digitized home movies gift turned out to be a gift for all of us. 

We sat transfixed by the pictures flashing across the screen – a mix of videos of my parents wedding, my siblings and I on the beach making sandcastles, the time I got an enormous tiger that I named Wally, family parties with old-timey dancing and so much more.

But the joy and nostalgia did not limit itself to the people in the room. We were able to share on YouTube, email, and Facebook. In the next few weeks, I received many calls from relatives who had seen the videos. I could hear the elation in their voices when they animatedly told me about watching the home videos. As with my grandmother, there were other family members who had passed on and their children and grandchildren were so thrilled to see the home videos of them; some had never seen those videos before or had no video memories of their loved ones themselves.

Digitizing Old Home Movies – Turning Yesterday’s Adventures into Today’s Emotions

That year turned out to be the best year ever. It was a nice surprise to discover that the perfect gift of old home videos had been collecting dust in the basement for years and just needed to be unearthed and updated to be compatible with today’s technology to be enjoyed again by all.

So, this year, instead of hitting the shopping mall, explore your dusty shelves or your parents’ attic to see what nostalgic memories await you.

And don’t just limit your hunt to old home videos for digitization, there are so many other memory lane riches awaiting you:

• Shoeboxes or photo albums filled with treasured photo prints – digitize large quantities of prints in a variety of sizes and preserve them with shoebox scanning services.
• Old photographic slides – scan and digitize mounds of slides with slide scanning services.
• Restore the beauty of faded or damaged photographs – touch up, restore, colourize, and preserve your old photos with photo restoration services.
• Photo and negative preservation options – don’t forget the photo and negative storage options available to you to safely preserve and share your photos and negatives: memory cards, USBs, memory card readers, and negative pages.

So, don’t wait – videos and photos degrade over time. Dig out those old home movies and photos today and preserve them by digitizing those precious memories. And do it early if you want your treasures in time to share with your loved ones. It truly is one of the best gifts you can give that will be cherished for years to come.

Contact the Video Transfer and Photo Preservation Experts at Annex Photo today!