September 11, 2014 By James Tanner for FamilySearch
Many years ago, my mother-in-law produced a video presentation about one of her remote ancestors who immigrated from England. She had visited his birthplace and had slides and photographs of him and the important locations of his life. These photos were scanned and she added a narrative and some music and produced an extremely interesting memorial to his life. A few copies were made on VHS tape and distributed to family members. Time has passed and . . .
Many years ago, my mother-in-law produced a video presentation about one of her remote ancestors who immigrated from England. She had visited his birthplace and had slides and photographs of him and the important locations of his life. These photos were scanned and she added a narrative and some music and produced an extremely interesting memorial to his life. A few copies were made on VHS tape and distributed to family members. Time has passed and . . .
a whole new generation of grandchildren and great- grandchildren are growing up. Guess what? Not one of them presently owns a VHS player. For all practical purposes, that video production by their great-grandmother is lost even though some of the tapes may still be available from older family members.
Think about the changes in media format that continue at an accelerated pace today, we have migrated from audio cassettes to digital files and from videos on VHS tape to downloading movies from the Web. These examples point out several lessons. First, technology changes and family history in one format needs to be periodically migrated to a newer file or media format. In the case of my wife’s mother’s video, I digitized the entire video some time ago and many of my children have copies of the video in digital format. But what about other family members? Fortunately, there are several alternatives in today’s online world.
You may associate Google’s YouTube with strange or unusual online videos, but there is a huge genealogy related YouTube community and the practice of posting genealogy videos online is growing rapidly. Whether you convert your old VHS movies or make a new one entirely from digital sources, you can create your own family YouTube channel and make your movies available to your entire extended family with virtually no cost other than the time and expense of making the original. A family history movie might be a slide show of digitized photos with some music and narration, but the real challenge is incorporating those old home movies. You may have inherited a box of 8 mm or even 16 mm movies or may have taken them yourself years ago. There are professional companies that will transfer those movies to digital format or you can do it yourself with the right equipment, but that is definitely the subject of another post. If your home movies are on old VHS or other format tapes, the challenge will be finding a working machine to play them back.
Converting videotape to digital format is not difficult with the right programs and hardware equipment and fortunately, VHS players that have USB connections that will work with modern computers are readily available online. If you already have VHS recorder or can rent or borrow one, you also can use the video and audio out ports on the back of the machine to transfer the data from the VHS tape to your computer with an analog to video converter for a PC. Older video machines usually had RCA connectors for both audio and video. These connectors used a cable with a round terminal with a prominent post in the middle. See Wikipedia:RCA connector. Here is a photo of RCA cables:
Think about the changes in media format that continue at an accelerated pace today, we have migrated from audio cassettes to digital files and from videos on VHS tape to downloading movies from the Web. These examples point out several lessons. First, technology changes and family history in one format needs to be periodically migrated to a newer file or media format. In the case of my wife’s mother’s video, I digitized the entire video some time ago and many of my children have copies of the video in digital format. But what about other family members? Fortunately, there are several alternatives in today’s online world.
You may associate Google’s YouTube with strange or unusual online videos, but there is a huge genealogy related YouTube community and the practice of posting genealogy videos online is growing rapidly. Whether you convert your old VHS movies or make a new one entirely from digital sources, you can create your own family YouTube channel and make your movies available to your entire extended family with virtually no cost other than the time and expense of making the original. A family history movie might be a slide show of digitized photos with some music and narration, but the real challenge is incorporating those old home movies. You may have inherited a box of 8 mm or even 16 mm movies or may have taken them yourself years ago. There are professional companies that will transfer those movies to digital format or you can do it yourself with the right equipment, but that is definitely the subject of another post. If your home movies are on old VHS or other format tapes, the challenge will be finding a working machine to play them back.
Converting videotape to digital format is not difficult with the right programs and hardware equipment and fortunately, VHS players that have USB connections that will work with modern computers are readily available online. If you already have VHS recorder or can rent or borrow one, you also can use the video and audio out ports on the back of the machine to transfer the data from the VHS tape to your computer with an analog to video converter for a PC. Older video machines usually had RCA connectors for both audio and video. These connectors used a cable with a round terminal with a prominent post in the middle. See Wikipedia:RCA connector. Here is a photo of RCA cables:
The trick is getting the signal from the RCA output to something your computer can recognize. If you do an online search for USB to RCA cables, you will find a number of inexpensive converters.
Getting the signal from your VHS player to your computer is only half the battle. The other half is converting the RCA video and audio signal to a digital file. This is done with specialized software. By far the most popular program for converting analog audio and video signals to digital is Roxio’s Toast program for the Macintosh computers. Roxio also has a program called Easy VHS to DVD. The same program is available for Windows computers under the name of Roxio Creator NXT 2. There are many other programs that do some of the same things so you may want to search for “video conversion” or “audio conversion” on the Internet.
Once you have digital files of your movies or photographs, you need to produce the video production. That too will be the subject of more complete posts, but essentially you need a video editing program. Many Mac computers come with a program called iMovie. Windows users can download Microsoft’s Movie Maker. But, in addition to these two, there are a variety of programs at all levels of difficulty for both Macs and Windows computers. There are free downloadable programs and others that cost into the thousands of dollars.
If you are looking for a professional-level program, you should spend some time doing research online to understand what you are getting into. Think professional feature movies in a theater. This is the high end of video editing.
If you are going to use still photographs in a presentation, this is much simpler than incorporating video. You can digitize your photos with a scanner or digital camera and incorporate them into a slide show using most of the video editing programs.
OK, now you have your video transferred to your computer and/or you have a number of pictures you want to incorporate into the production. The next step is to write the script. Unless you plan on having a silent slide show or movie, you will need some narration for the presentation. Believe me, you cannot just sit down and create a narrative on the spur of the moment. It takes some preparation and perhaps some research to come up with a coherent narrative. You might try using a word processing program to create your production or you can use a pencil and a pad of paper. The important thing is to tell the story in a way that makes sense and presents the facts in and entertaining way. Don’t expect your family to watch the video more than once if there not some entertainment value.
If you have watched even a few of the self-produced videos on YouTube you know what the word painful means. Many of the videos are full of pauses, umms, and “likes” and other space fillers. To avoid this it is imperative to work from a script and practice the presentation if necessary, unless you do video production for an occupation. If you use a movie editing program such as the ones from Apple and Microsoft, you can edit out the pauses and undesirable comments.
Uploading your video to YouTube requires you to have an account. The first place to go is to the Help menu and click on Getting Started. Then follow the instructions to get your video moved onto YouTube. Then notify your relatives that the video is in place.
Getting the signal from your VHS player to your computer is only half the battle. The other half is converting the RCA video and audio signal to a digital file. This is done with specialized software. By far the most popular program for converting analog audio and video signals to digital is Roxio’s Toast program for the Macintosh computers. Roxio also has a program called Easy VHS to DVD. The same program is available for Windows computers under the name of Roxio Creator NXT 2. There are many other programs that do some of the same things so you may want to search for “video conversion” or “audio conversion” on the Internet.
Once you have digital files of your movies or photographs, you need to produce the video production. That too will be the subject of more complete posts, but essentially you need a video editing program. Many Mac computers come with a program called iMovie. Windows users can download Microsoft’s Movie Maker. But, in addition to these two, there are a variety of programs at all levels of difficulty for both Macs and Windows computers. There are free downloadable programs and others that cost into the thousands of dollars.
If you are looking for a professional-level program, you should spend some time doing research online to understand what you are getting into. Think professional feature movies in a theater. This is the high end of video editing.
If you are going to use still photographs in a presentation, this is much simpler than incorporating video. You can digitize your photos with a scanner or digital camera and incorporate them into a slide show using most of the video editing programs.
OK, now you have your video transferred to your computer and/or you have a number of pictures you want to incorporate into the production. The next step is to write the script. Unless you plan on having a silent slide show or movie, you will need some narration for the presentation. Believe me, you cannot just sit down and create a narrative on the spur of the moment. It takes some preparation and perhaps some research to come up with a coherent narrative. You might try using a word processing program to create your production or you can use a pencil and a pad of paper. The important thing is to tell the story in a way that makes sense and presents the facts in and entertaining way. Don’t expect your family to watch the video more than once if there not some entertainment value.
If you have watched even a few of the self-produced videos on YouTube you know what the word painful means. Many of the videos are full of pauses, umms, and “likes” and other space fillers. To avoid this it is imperative to work from a script and practice the presentation if necessary, unless you do video production for an occupation. If you use a movie editing program such as the ones from Apple and Microsoft, you can edit out the pauses and undesirable comments.
Uploading your video to YouTube requires you to have an account. The first place to go is to the Help menu and click on Getting Started. Then follow the instructions to get your video moved onto YouTube. Then notify your relatives that the video is in place.