This evening I looked through an old box of media tapes and CDs which managed to survive our 1000+ mile move from Oklahoma to North Carolina two years ago. There are some priceless artifacts here.
Basically all the Digital 8 and MiniDV video tapes which I recorded of our kids and family growing up are in the box, along with a variety of burned CDs and DVDs. I created a number of iMovie videos with a lot of this family video footage, and burned those DVDs we still have and posted them to a “Fryer Family Media Timeline” which I created with the Knight Lab’s Timeline tool. A collection of Zip disks and even a few audio cassette tapes are there, including one from 1978 which feature some creative stories I recorded as a 7 or 8 year old. Titles include “Terror Castle” and “The Ship in Deeper Water.”
Unfortunately, I do not have a cassette player or digital camcorders any more which will play these tapes. I should probably start looking in local pawn shops for players that might work. In addition to a LOT of video footage of our family, there are video tapes from my years working in the College of Education at Texas Tech (2001 – 2006) and some travel video tapes, including Shelly and my first trip to Shanghai, China, in 2007.
We have a local video and multimedia store, Create A Video of Mint Hill, which has equipment to digitize many analog media sources, including audio cassettes. They helped me convert a 1972 Analog Reel-to-Reel Audio Letter Tape recorded by my dad’s mom (my “Gram,” AKA Lydia “Tiddle” Fryer) which I shared this summer at our family reunion in Minnesota, and posted to our Family Oral History webpage.
The memories included in this box are truly PRICELESS, but today they are also mostly HOSTAGES of deprecated media formats.
It’s still possible we may have it, but I suspect my dad in Manhattan, Kansas, may have an audio tape recorded in Lubbock, Texas, in the late 1990s, of my mom’s mom and my other grandmother (Gertrude “Trudy” Waters Henley) telling some stories about her life and childhood, growing up in Shreveport, Louisiana. Boy I would love to find that recording and get it converted to a digital format!
Last night I was texting our daughter in Colorado, and she mentioned wanting the audio recordings she recorded in France when she was on an exchange trip there her senior year of high school. Thankfully, those recordings are still on my portable, battery operated Sony audio recorder, and I was able to find them and share them with her via Google Drive. She was so excited to have them!
I’m actually using Descript.com to create a French transcription of one of those files, to find out from Rachel how accurate it is. I’ve created some English transcriptions recently of long (1.5 hour) interviews I helped volunteers at a local historical society record over the summer, and I’ve been very impressed with the results.
It is SO important to convert precious media recordings of family and friends into formats which can “withstand the test of time!” But what, exactly, is that format?! For starters, it’s vital to convert analog media into DIGITAL formats. But that’s not enough… Just witness the ZIP DISKS in my box of treasures tonight. Since we didn’t move with my much beloved Blue and White “Yosemite” Mac Pro computer, my ability to “read” and access antiquated Zip disks has evaporated.
Don’t let this same fate befall your own family media recordings! Convert them while you can!
More resources about preserving family oral history and creating a variety of “digital stories” are available on the Storychasers website, which I continue to maintain as a personal passion project.
I predict many of these media recordings which are “format hostages” today will one day be set free… and again be enjoyed by our family, but this time, as DIGITAL files!
Source : Priceless Media Hostages
