Procrastination has its consequences, as evidenced by the dozen VHS tapes I should have digitized years ago.
Many of them are now faded, and I'm fearful the films will tear before I can digitize them, leaving me only with fading memories in my mind.
I remember somewhat fondly carrying a 10-pound camcorder on my shoulder and shooting hours of life events: bringing home our first-born, his first steps, and a classic watermelon-eating competition when he was 4 years old. Our other children eventually made cameos too.
Digitizing those moments requires a device that will attach on one end to a VCR or other analog device and on the other my Mac. There are several such devices. The $60 Roxio Easy VHS to DVD device for Mac and Windows suits my needs. Pinnacle makes a $60 Dazzle device, which I tried several years ago. Both work the same way.
Take the video- and audio-out cables from the analog device and connect them to the transfer device, which has color-coded inputs on one end and a USB 2 cable on the other. Plug the USB cable into a port on the computer and install the software, which is intuitive enough that you don't have to read the short manual.
You then turn the VCR or other device on, click the "record" icon on your PC, press "play" on the VCR, and you're in business. Video footage is displayed in a window on the PC's monitor. Scenes can be cut as they're played. The device captures sound, too. Alas, my video cassettes have degraded to the point that the sound is great but the images are grainy and blurry.
The video footage can be burned to a DVD or exported to iMovie or another video-editing software and then into an iPhone. The video-editing software is where the real editing and sound mixing are done. I used Pinnacle Studio for the editing process because I'm familiar with the program. I was able to sharpen images a bit, but sadly, movies shot at a distance were still blurry. My son's graduation speech sounded great, but his face, shot at a distance, was not recognizable.
So, my advice is this: Even if you don't edit the footage you import with Roxio Easy VHS to DVD, import your movies and burn them to DVDs, which the program almost does for you. You can always edit them later. Importing from an analog device moves in real time, so depending on how much space you have on your hard drive, you can run through all your tapes in as much time as you can spare, confident that you are at least saving them from the degradation that occurs as analog tapes get older.
I procrastinated writing this column because I didn't want to admit that I'd messed up. Spending $60 for a transfer device years ago and a few pennies for DVDs would have meant the difference between fading memories in my mind and fading movies. Procrastinating has its consequences, and the results aren't pretty.
