How digitizing home movies helped me create new family moments from old memories

When I lost my mother last year, I had a lot of her things. It’s a painful rite of passage, especially as an only child, grappling with all that a parent left behind. Among his many prized possessions was a storage box filled with about 50 videotapes, most of which documented my childhood and adolescence.

I’ve talked about my grief journey before How I got nostalgic to get over my lossBut now, watching these home videos is an entirely different kind of nostalgia trip. As I reminisce about my past, certain questions and thoughts begin to creep into my mind (perhaps this is referring to residual anxiety). Instead of pushing them aside, I try to stay present and focus on what I can do now: appreciate these recorded memories and preserve them for the rest of my family.

Like with the help of digitization services southtree And Zstories DigitalI am able to preserve these memories and pass them on to my younger cousins, who now get a glimpse of some family history they may not have known about. It was great to send footage messages to my cousin in New York from our time together as kids and see her reactions in real time.

Southtree: send video, get back flash drive

with southtreeI ordered their 5-item package online. Several days later, I received a box (with prepaid return shipping labels) filled with five pieces of analog media I wanted to digitize (four VHS-C tapes and one 8mm reel). For my digital option, I chose the cloud (as opposed to DVD or thumb drive), which eventually became a link to a personal Google Drive where I could download all my videos. Unfortunately, the 8mm reel was unusable (thankfully, they offered a partial refund for the inconvenience).

watch video from My Family’s Orlando Vacation reminds me how obsessed i was Jurassic ParkI can be seen wearing the logo of the film in almost every shot. It’s even more meaningful now to see myself meeting my grandmother for the first time during a trip to Japan. and every other Holiday, birthdayAnd special occasion Recorded on tape, it was a reminder of the love I was surrounded by.

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Many of these videos also include clues and Easter eggs that hint at the future. Many family members can be seen smoking (indoors!), which was quite popular in the 80’s and 90’s. If I knew what I know now, would I have changed things? Would I have told my uncle to quit smoking before he lost his life to lung cancer in 2017? Would I have spent more time with my great-grandmother? Will I hold on longer?

Zstories Digital: Faster and Scrappier

If you want a more personal touch to your experience, Zstories Digital offers helpful progress updates and fast, affordable service. Owner John Nalbantian started the business two years ago. After his mother passed away, his father came to him with a box of VHS tapes he wanted to digitize. With the equipment he already had in his video lab, John helped his grieving father and was soon inspired to do this professionally for other people.

As I continue to mourn my mother, I feel the need to preserve the memories of both of my parents. Therefore, I presented ten tapes of my trip to Japan, where I met obachan For the first time. My goal: to consolidate all the footage into edited-down videos that I can share on YouTube with the rest of my family, especially my cousin in Japan who is raising her own family. Once my videos were returned to me on the USB drive, I immediately went back to the footage, which surprisingly turned out to be much clearer than when viewed on my ancient VCR.

There were things I didn’t remember (like the UCLA T-shirt) and memories I could never forget (a grand dinner at my uncle’s beautiful house in the city of Ishinomaki, which was devastated in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami). There were also familiar sights and places like Kyoto’s Kinkakuji, aka the Golden Pavilion, which I eventually visited when I returned to Japan as an adult.

‘The issue is to ensure that we deliver quality results that are affordable,’ says Zstories’ Nalbantian. ‘The mission is to preserve those happy memories because we know that each tape contains something that is sentimental to someone, and they deteriorate over time.’

And Time It’s one of those things that I have now. I want to make sure I use it wisely as I move forward on my grief journey and reconnect with more of my loved ones. Reliving these memories is one of the best gifts I can give them – and myself.