How Can I Get My Home Movies Onto My Computer?

Remember that camcorder you purchased back in the 80's or 90's? The one that recorded onto a VHS or mini-VHS tape? Do you even still have a VHS player in your house? More and more, people are wanting to digitize their older media (media being photos, movies, and audio) to get it onto the computer where they can edit and share it. The trick is, how do you get the videos from your old camcorder onto your computer?

A digital video converter is what you need! These small, handy devices plug into your VCR, camcorder, or any other device with the above shown plugs on one end and into your computer on the other end. Using software that comes with the device, you can then easily bring the video into your computer in varying quality, formats and sizes. The product shown above is made by a company named Elgato which specializes in video devices for computers and gets very good reviews. You can find their webpage here.

Just like with converting your old photos into digital versions (click here on how to do that), you want to first shop around for places that will do it for you for a fee and compare the cost of purchasing the equipment and doing it yourself with the cost of hiring a person or company to do it for you. A company can often do it faster, but being able to do it on your own time and in the privacy of your own home can be nice as well.

Practical Tip of the Day:
Video converters can do lots of other things. For example, Elgato also makes a product that lets a person record their video game screen from a console like an Xbox or Playstation. This can be a nice gift for the video gamer in your family that you struggle to find something for. This device will record their game play, and then they can edit it to make movies to share with their friends, family, or post to websites like Youtube.

How Can I Get My Old Photos Onto My Computer?

Ah, the old photo albums! Or maybe it's more like the the old box-of-photos-that-really-should-go-in-an-album-someday. A significant number of households still have a a lot of printed photos and/or slides stored away. With he digital age, though, there's more and more pressure to digitize the photos as well so they can be saved on the computer and even go on the Internet if you so desire. This can seem like a daunting task though, especially if you don't know where to start...

The best place to start is with a rough approximation of how many photos you have that you want to put on your computer. This matters because while 50 photos might be easy enough to do yourself in an afternoon, 5,000 is a whole other ball game. If you fall into the later category and have thousands of photos, hiring a service that specializes in digitizing photos and videos might be worth it, but if you fall into the former, it might not. For this article, let's assume you've chosen to do it yourself.

An example of a digital negatives scanner.

How are you going to get the photos into the computer? With a scanner. If you only have a small number of photos and/or don't care about getting optimal quality, using a scanner that's built into a printer can work just fine; check your owner's manual for instructions on using the scanner.  If you have a large number, or do want the best possible quality, a stand alone photo scanner might be better for you. These can range in size, price and features so dramatically that it's difficult to give much guidance here except to look for "photo digital converters" and do lots of research before buying anything. What about slides and negatives you ask? Doing that same search will also yield results for devices that can scan those too!

Practical Tip of the Day:
Still not sure if it'd be cheaper to do it yourself or hire a company? Price out the cost of hiring someone, and compare it to the cost of any equipment you may need to buy + how much your time is worth. Whichever is cheaper is our answer! (Keep in mind that professionals will often get it done faster and have higher quality results though.)