[HN Gopher] I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and I don't k...
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I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and I don't know what to do
with them
Author : keybits
Score : 66 points
Date : 2024-09-25 08:19 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (takes.jamesomalley.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (takes.jamesomalley.co.uk)
| keybits wrote:
| Includes a fascinating story of how teletext images can be
| recovered from VHS recordings using a TV capture card.
| brunoqc wrote:
| Drop them in front of the Red Letter Media warehouse in the
| middle of the night.
| Molitor5901 wrote:
| eBay! My brother used to tape bicycle races and has hundreds of
| them. He's been blanking them and selling them on eBay for about
| $5 each.
| roywiggins wrote:
| I somehow think that may be the exact opposite of what the
| author is going for...
| Molitor5901 wrote:
| True but at some point.. unless someone takes them off his
| hands he's going to have to face a decision. Better to
| recycle and sell them, than toss them in the bin.
| metalman wrote:
| 2000 vhs tapes on the wall 2000 vhs tapes take one down pass it
| around 1999 vhs tapes on the wall
| dylan604 wrote:
| I used to work in a VHS duplication facility, and spent plenty
| of time with a degausser to erase tapes. Not a fond memory.
| Plus, if you forgot about your wallet, you could ruin your
| credit cards and license.
| caboteria wrote:
| I would imagine that the Archive Team would be interested in
| these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive_Team
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Logistics in progress.
| airstrike wrote:
| Don't miss Pete's comment on that post. Such a cool YT channel!
| agumonkey wrote:
| vhs to dvd drives are fun
| https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313...
| urbandw311er wrote:
| I wonder if the conversion software would have the unwanted
| side effect of filtering out the teletext content.
| npunt wrote:
| Whenever I see old low res grainy footage like this I wonder how
| well the latest image gen & AI can restore it
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| My experience trying to upscale Lexx from DVD copies is... not
| well...
| bahmboo wrote:
| This isn't about the video part of the recordings
| urbandw311er wrote:
| One of the major broadcasters like C4 might be intersted.
| Potentially there may even be some valuable deleted old shows on
| those tapes, like a lost episode of something.
| cj wrote:
| Side note: any recommendations for digitization services for ~80
| mini DV tapes?
|
| Currently planning to try out LegacyBox, but the reviews are
| mixed.
| DaveChurchill wrote:
| Get a FireWire cable and rip the data straight from a dvcam to
| get the raw video files. Then compress with desired settings
| cj wrote:
| Ah actually they're 8mm cassette tapes and vhs-c. From 20-40
| years ago
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Cheap? Get one of those chinese composite video to SD card
| mp4 rippers.
|
| Perfect? A linux PC with 400 dollars RF capture card plus
| vhsdecode software.
| profsummergig wrote:
| AI solves this. Get AI to consume the lot and store it somewhere.
|
| Then, in the future, query the AI to find out if a specific piece
| of footage (that you need) is contained therein.
| batch12 wrote:
| A .txt file solves this if this is all op needs.
| FredPret wrote:
| But an AI is a great candidate to annotate the .txt
| antileet wrote:
| I can't tell if this is satire or not.
|
| Have you considered storing it on the blockchain instead, so
| this way it is immutable and permanent? /s
| farias0 wrote:
| I don't know why people are worried about storage. You can
| just store it on the cloud.
| thfuran wrote:
| I know this guy Chad with nice shelves.
| fallinditch wrote:
| It can become a compulsion to record and collect media. Seems
| like a male thing, normally it's blokes who create these
| archives.
|
| I met a bloke once in the 90's who made recordings on to C-90
| tapes of anything interesting that was on BBC Radio 4 and 3, and
| he found most things interesting. He was surrounded by piles,
| thousands of tapes everywhere and he was desperately trying to
| catalog everything. As I spoke to him he was listening to the
| radio via an ear bud, whilst also recording the radio. He was
| supposed to be moving out of his house that day, having just
| exchanged contacts, but he was drowning in his precious tapes.
| His wife seemed pretty p**d off with him.
|
| I was a bit compulsive myself. I used to buy records, then CDs,
| and I also made tapes of albums, and recordings of the John Peel
| show. It was a problem to shift 100s of records and CDs and boxes
| of tapes whenever I moved house. I lightened my load by giving
| everything away apart from the Peel tapes which were the most
| entertaining items in the whole collection, it actually felt
| good. I kept hold of the Peel tapes for some years, even though
| my tape deck had died. There were some great shows from the 90s!
| But then I had to downsize again so I took them to the rubbish
| tip, even that didn't make me sad.
|
| Ultimately, having and keeping stuff just weighs you down.
| dangsux wrote:
| If you at all know him you must get him to contact the bbc
| archival team.
| Sakos wrote:
| Why the BBC? It should go to archives like archive.org and
| publicly accessible "pirate" archives, so corporations like
| the BBC can't stick it in a vault and bury it.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Luckily, hoarding digital media is a lot easier and doesn't
| take up much space.
| Sakos wrote:
| Yeah, my 30TB of digital media fits in a shoebox and even
| doubling that would still fit in the same shoebox. It's also
| not something that takes up a lot of time unless you let it
| take over your life. Maybe a few hours a week of gathering
| new media (movies, shows, games, YouTube videos, etc.), then
| I move on with my life and do other things.
|
| I've effectively given up on collecting DVDs or anything else
| that takes up too much space, and it's such a load off my
| mind not having to worry about where to out it all, how to
| display it, or even how to transport it whenever I move.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Maybe I'm wrong, but I would assume that in the 1990s to 2000s
| studios were better about archiving production data, and there
| aren't likely to be "lost episodes" in this stash?
| DigiEggz wrote:
| You'd be very surprised.
| dylan604 wrote:
| you'd be not right. things happen. tapes get misplaced. tapes
| get lost. tapes get damaged. the people working at the studios
| are merely human. and at this point, there's even fewer humans
| working at the studios as they keep laying people off.
| zdw wrote:
| Probably the highest quality retrieval is with:
| https://github.com/oyvindln/vhs-decode
|
| which reads the raw data off a variety of tape formats and
| converts it to video. Grew out of the domesday project for
| lasterdiscs
| adamrezich wrote:
| Thank you for this link! My mom went through hell trying
| several "professional" commercial services both locally and
| elsewhere, just trying to get our couple dozen or so family
| video VHS tapes converted into some digital format. They all
| suck _ass_ --not that my mom cares, of course, she's perfectly
| content watching videos of her children hideously stretched
| from 4:3 to 16:9, among many other issues. But now at least I
| have a weekend project to look forward to!
| ToDougie wrote:
| This was so charming. I wish my parents had more recorded
| content of us, but it was a rare day that someone would get
| out the camcorder, and even rarer that the files would get
| transposed anywhere. But I do think there are some really old
| hard drives (anywhere from 10G to 40G) sitting somewhere in a
| garage, full of JPEGs of us.
| schappim wrote:
| James should donate it to the UK's version of Australia's:
| https://youtube.com/@davidthegreen
| jwagenet wrote:
| I'm somewhat baffled as to what is taking so long to at least
| digitize the tapes. He alludes to perhaps some more steps than
| just pressing play, but it seems to me the workload could be
| broken up by focusing on recording the tape data and dealing with
| the digital editing later to eliminate the physical tape problem.
| douglee650 wrote:
| Send in to southtree or similar service, get tapes plus an SSD
| with digital files back
|
| Run through AI and ask to transcribe, summarize, and catalog an
| index
|
| Store in secure S3 bucket or NAS
|
| Create a website/blog post with ask for access
| QuadrupleA wrote:
| Probably an age-old theme, but as a guy now in my 40s, it's
| humbling and a little sad to see how many things that were so
| vital, alive, and relevant in my childhood (and past eras) that
| are now dead and almost gone from the collective memory.
|
| As the Buddha said, all is impermanent.
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