If you have old home videos on VHS or 8mm, convert them to digital sooner rather than later
Convert your old VHS or 8mm home videos to digital format to preserve cherished memories before they degrade due to analogue format limitations and environmental factors. Picture: Michael Sherman/IOL
Image: Michael Sherman/IOL
It’s time to get with the times. If you still own VHS or 8mm film with your cherished home videos on them, you need to get them digitised as soon as possible.
Whether it’s a child’s first steps or footage of a long-departed family pet, these cherished memories have a very definite expiry date.
This is because the old technologies like VHS and 8mm are an analogue format and therefore degrade over time.
Any kind of moisture or significant heat can easily destroy these old tapes, and before further detonation occurs, it’s important to transfer them to a different format.
Digitising Old Footage: Quality Limitations and DIY Options
It’s also important to note that digitising your old footage can’t improve the quality of the picture or the audio much, if at all.
Those old VHS tapes are notorious for developing ‘pockets’ in the audio, where the sound levels become extremely consistent and dipping in and out of what’s actually audio.
The options available to the public are therefore approaching one of the few professionals that offer such a service, or you can attempt to do it yourself.
Personally, I’ve gone for the latter as all you need is a laptop, VHS player (this may be difficult to find if you don’t already own one), and a Video to TV VHS converter cable to USB. There are plenty of options here for the converters as a quick Google showed a ton of options for well under R500.
It’s a small price to pay for those memories that could be soon, if they aren’t already, gone forever.