Back in March I first wrote about being a YesVideo Ambassador and sending a bunch of Slides, Video Tapes and 8mm movies to be converted to DVDs. Well, I got those back at the beginning of the month but I hadn’t had much time to watch the finished products but I did sit down and watch a bunch of the DVDs right before vacation. I wanted to write about them during vacation but I ended up relaxing and making more memories over vacation than writing about memories of the past. I could barely write about the memories I was making last week, in fact I wrote five days worth of posts in one night and tried to recall major points from our vacation too. So glad I have photos from vacation, so much easier to remember.
But I did get my DVDs from YesVideo and I was very impressed with the final products. My slides, video tapes, and 8mm movies were each individually packaged along with their respective DVDs. The entire box came packaged with a nice letter as well as a package of microwave popcorn with a thank you message on it. I thought that was a special touch. The DVDs themselves are very professional with great labels and packaging with images from the movies.
Watching the videos was fun. One DVD was of my grandfather’s 60th birthday. For some reason the whole video we kept saying hello to my Aunt and Uncle and cousins who were not at the party. Over and over again, it was pretty funny, to me, to Eva it just made her confused and upset. She asked why we kept saying hi to them. But this was in 1992 so video cameras were pretty novel ideas then and you recorded everything, everything. I think out of that video there would be maybe 15 – 20 minutes of real, usable video. It was fun watching all of it though because my daughter was confused seeing my aunts and uncles and cousins 20 years younger. The concept of people being around before she was born is a bit foreign to her. Then things really blew her mind when she saw the footage from the 8mm movies, those were of me as a baby. That was run to watch together. Unfortunately those movies were so short and with no sound from an 8mm movie you couldn’t hear what everyone sounded like back then, but it is so weird knowing that when I was born home movies still had no sound but my children will have HD quality movies of their growing up. Crazy.
This coming Tuesday I’m heading to California to tour the YesVideo facility to see how they do the cool things that they do with the media that is sent to them. Expect some informative video and photos from me and the other ambassadors.
Disclosure: This post was created in connection with my appointment as an Ambassador for YesVideo. Visit www.facebook.com/yesvideo to join the conversation.
How was the quality of the transfer? Were the videos as good as the source? (Not that VHS and 8mm are fantastic to begin with – but the DVD versions are comparable?)
Daniel,
It depends on the quality of the original. I had old VHS tapes that were never great stuff. The slides looked wonderful and some of the 8mm was too dark but that was the original film issue not the transfer quality. The transfer to DVD was very good.
The quality for mine that were on VHS or 8MM were both good…I was impressed!
I’ve been very impressed with the quality as well. I’m used to watching my old videos through the camcorder (you know the old TV hook up), and the DVDs are a more pleasant experience all around. Easier to navigate, better sound quality, etc.