How to Transfer Your Video Tapes Before They Fade Away

‘Tis the time of reckoning. As doting parents not willing to let one memory slip by uncaptured, we have been videotaping every event from the first hospital oohs and aahs to the first baby steps to their first recital to their school graduations.

And now we have stacks of videotapes stuffed in the safety of our cool, dark closets. Safety? Not. Video tapes have a shelf life.

When Barbara Streisand sang: "Misty, water-colored memories, of the way we were." she might as well have been referring to the thousands of videotapes of old home movies that are stuck in people's closets, slowly fading as they wait for someone to pull them out and copy them to digital media.

Don’t wait any longer. When you transfer those water-colored memories into digital media, you get these benefits:

1. Stop the degradation. Magnetic media starts degrading as early as 3 years.
2. Digital files can be edited with video-editing software and turned into movies with nifty transitions, special effects, soundtrack, and captions.
3. Digital files can be shared with friends and family via DVD, the internet, iPod, email, etc.

So is it easy to transfer video tapes to a digital form?

Today, it is. To learn about the different options available, click here.

Whatever you do, don't do nothing. Otherwise, your tapes will end up like my parents' tape. Click Play to see my "misty, water-colored memories".