06 April 2012

Media de Familia

Most of us have family photos and have scanned in quite a few. It makes them easy to share and add to our online trees. How excited do you get when you find that someone has uploaded a photo of an ancestor you've never seen before? Now imagine someone 50 or 100 years from now finding a video of their ancestor or hearing their voice.
Did your family have a VHS camera or an 8mm camera? Did a past family researcher get excited at the prospect of recording family interviews when cassette recorders were invented? Or maybe family members exchanged cassettes instead of letters. Transfer that media now!

Ysidro Dimas, my great-grandfather
VHS transferred to DVD

Do a search for your city and "8mm to DVD" or "cassette to CD" or whatever your media is. There may be somewhere cheaper that would involve shipping your media but saving a few dollars is not worth the added chance of your items being lost in the mail. Take the items to a store yourself and make sure they don't have to sit in a hot car while you run other errands. They've made it this far, don't let them melt now.
Once your media is transferred you can edit clips and put them on YouTube or vimeo. Both have a variety of privacy options if you aren't comfortable putting them on public display. If your tree is on Ancestry.com you cannot upload a pre-recorded video but you can write a story that includes a link to the video.
Surprise your family with some very personal Christmas presents or combine video and photos for a family reunion event.

William Gillespie, my great-grandfather
8mm film transferred to DVD


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7 comments:

  1. If a picture speaks a thousand words a video speaks ... a bazillion?? LOL ... I agree with you, those videos are priceless. Now AND in the future. And with technology the way it is now, it's easier than ever to record events. (I often make small recordings on my iphone with surprisingly high quality).

    Carrie @ Not Your Mother’s Genealogy
    a.k.a “DearMYRTLE’s daughter

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    1. Thanks Carrie! I have a ton more. Now if I could just find the time (and hard drive space) to edit them all ;-)

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    2. You've just reminded me of one of those hundreds of things that I've been "meaning to do!" But this is a really important one for sure.

      Great blog...looking forward to more!

      Carla
      sassygenealogist.blogspot.com
      sassyjustwrites.blogspot.com

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  2. Thanks Carla!
    I'm lucky that my mom took the initiative on this. I just had to get copies made. Just typing that made me think of something I should've included :-P Making copies to distribute to family members can insure against memories being lost to disaster (fire, flood, tornado, etc.). Oh well, if I do another post about media I'll have to include that.

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  3. I just found your blog on Geneabloggers. Welcome to the community! :)

    As soon as I read the description of your blog I hurried over to follow you. No part of genealogy drives me crazier than false trees that have been copied and recopied (faster now that they're online!) until people assume that since everyone agrees on them, they must be accurate! And when people have sources cited, and then I look at the sources and it's a list of Ancestry user trees, or Geni profiles, oh my goodness. What are they thinking?!

    I'm looking forward to reading more of your posts! :)

    Lianne Lavoie
    http://storiesofacanadianfamily.blogspot.com

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