Would you know what to do if you found yourself with a box of VHS tapes, filled with video footage that’s like an archive of your family history?
Years back (in the 1980’s) at every important family event, it wasn’t unusual to see someone floating around with a camcorder. Wedding parties, Christmas events, Christenings, Baptisms, and yes on holiday too.
It was the bigger version of a smartphone, but given the price, not everyone was going about filming.
Larger camcorders had VCRs (Video Cassette Recorder) so you would need a VCR or VHS (Video Home System) to watch them back. Archive videos recorded in the early 80’s are more likely to be these. By the 90’s, the “cassettes” got smaller. Video tape recorders were more compact. Like the size of a professional camera.
These used different file formats, mainly Hi8, MiniDV, and DVCAM. These tapes are the size of the old-school cassettes – before CDs came along.
All the players needed to watch these videos are out of production. You can only buy used players from specialist dealers, or in the vintage section on eBay UK. If you have tapes (not the bigger cassettes to play with a VHS player) you can buy cassette adaptors that let you put the tape into a cassette then play it on a VHS or VCR.
To convert these to digital, you need to first have a player to play them and another device to record them, like a DVD recorder. Connecting them needs to be done with an RCA cable, which is the one with red, yellow, and white connections. Red and white carry the sound signals, the yellow is the analogue video input cable.
If you don’t have a recorder, you can save digital copies of old films as .mov or .mp4 files on your computer, or upload them to cloud storage.
RCA connectors have three cables on one end, but the other end has a different connector, and that’s the one you need to match to whatever your device uses. RCA to USB, RCA to AV, or the RCA to HDMI connector.
Once you have those connected, you can then make digital recordings.
The alternative is to use a VHS to digital conversion service. You can find companies offering this service based around the UK by searching online.
Capture Image Stills from Video Playback to Print and Frame
When watching the videos, if you do notice an amazing shot that you would like to have printed, take a screenshot of it. If you are watching on a computer, there’s usually an integrated screenshot feature. On TVs, it would need to be a photo of the screen taken with a camera.
They won’t be terrific copies, but you can use image editing software to improve the quality or to change the colour by using monochrome for black and white, or perhaps apply a sepia filter using image editing software.
In Conclusion
Photos can be stored in various formats that aren’t confined to print. Video footage is just motion photos. You can harvest the images from them.
Old family recordings are likely to have precious family memories that need preserving before it’s too late. Video cassettes are the family archives that are most at risk of being lost forever if they aren’t converted before there’s no longer a market for used VHS or VCR players.
For now, even images from VHS can be recovered to create digital files, and those can be edited to improve the quality ready to print and frame.