In a message dated 11/18/2003 2:23:31 PM Pacific Standard Time, bowsersa@pa.net writes: > My experience went like this- Sam, reading this story about your experiences rings so many familiar bells. I'm still laughing as I know first hand how frustrating this all can be . . . That's why I've resorted to organizing what I want done and then test the waters with various types of printers and audio/visual people. I can't even begin to tell you all the stories/nightmares of jobs I've tried to do for clients that turned into a similar situation before I learned how to do some of this stuff . . . and I couldn't pass that cost onto the client either. Had to just chaulk it up to a learning experience. > This becomes work, not fun; after 8 hours or so. > That's why people get $80-$90 an hour (probably more now), to do it. > Copying a tape to disk is easy. Once you have the equipment set up, you > can go have a six-pack &the computer does the work. Editing, adding > graphics and sound bytes are excruciating. Until I got more RAM, a beefed up graphics card and more gigabytes of speed, I'd get almost a full page of photos up and my computer would lock up too. I had to turn the auto backup off when I was manipulating the photos (some were TIFFs), because I would get to a point when I was almost finished and it would freeze up on me again. I tried saving more often as I went along, but every save took 5-10 minutes and then it would go into auto backup again. My last family history calendar and trying to multi task pushed me over the brink . . . I went out and purchased a CPU full of gigabytes, but still no DVD capacity. > So I ended up with something like a half hour of material I wanted to > change > to DVD format. Not that I could put it on disk anyway, since I didn't have a > DVD recorder (but I could play it back on the computer). Anyway, the > computer told me it was going to take 8 hours or more to process this 20 > minutes to a half hour of stuff I put together. The computer locked up > about half way through and I went through the whole process again. This > time I ended up with 15 minutes worth. Yep . . . same as I experienced . . . and it wasn't funny at the time. > The playback was fine, as long as you kept it in the little 3"X 4" box, > which > was the default. When you went to full screen mode, the picture quality was > lousy. Probably would have been worse on a tv. > > My camcorder is Super VHS. If you've ever copied VHS tapes much, you > know the first copy is usually decent. If you make a copy FROM the copy, > the picture quality deteriorates badly. My brother-in-law used WalMart to copy his 8mm or 16mm (I can't remember what he had), but his tapes were all on little reels. They had been stored for almost 50 years (I was on them at 13 years old!). He tried to show them 30 years ago and the film keep breaking, and he'd have to splice it together. They were silent movies at that time though. I advanced the money for him to take all the tapes of the family get-togethers and have them put on VHS. He started out viewing the films first and then when his projector bulb burned out, he just grabbed a bunch of reels and had them copied too -- I've got about 1/2 hour of boats and fish photos on Lake Erie, no people. Oh there were a few shots of people but you had to look real quick or you were looking at more fish or more boats going hither and yon -- the same boat, over and over, probably the same fish being held by everyone that fished that day. At least you can fast forward through the monotony. I have three VHS tapes full of wonderful pictures. One of them has a picture of the old Hetrick barn at Melchoir and Lizzy Hetrick's farm on Maynardier Ridge Road (my grandparents). We took a picture of it with our Sony camcorder in 1992. The camcorder bit the dust last year. Doris tried to find that same picture for us so we could get a shot of it with our new digital camera but we ran out of time as Isabel was moving in and we had to meet other cousins for dinner. I'm going to sit down with my tapes and run them and get an hour's worth of photos to be extracted. It would be worth the money. We managed to get footage of one of my (Glotfelty) cousins a year before she died. No one had ever taken a picture of her on camcorder. We were teasing her that she was going to be a movie star. She got all embarrased. That was the first year I started working on my family history. We drove to Salisbury, MD on our way to Garrett County. Got out of the car with the camcorder running and my brother narriating as we walked up Rock Rd to my uncle Roy's home first stopping at the school. As we approached uncle Roy's house some little kids saw us coming with the camcorder running and didn't know what to think of it all. It was their grandmother Miriam Garlitz (uncle Roy's eldest daughter) that we got on camcorder. We passed the old abandoned Humble gas station where Mark Hetrick worked and just a block or so further West to Miriam and Sam Garlitz's house where their family maintained the Salibury cemetery. That little bit of film was priceless to Miriam's family. With Super VHS you have a little > higher resolution and the picture doesn't > deteriorate quite as badly. I think 8MM or Super 8 (Sony) probably also holds > up better than regular VHS. Could be. I have copies made from both and I can't really tell (or remember the difference). The lighting was a real problem in the 50s and 60s though. A lot of the footage was taken inside. My brother-in-law finally got a set of lights to use inside. There were 3-4 large lights across in a row and a handle (was "T" shaped). > The main problem I think was not the "Dazzle" device (which has SVHS in > and out jacks); but a slow computer with not enough memory to handle > video capture; even though I was assured by the salesman <G> that it > would work fine. Yes, I can imagine. You are at their mercy when you can't talk the language or understand the process. > I should add that I bought the external device that plugged into the serial > port (I don't think it was USB). An internal card, Firewire, a faster > machine > with more memory; all of that should make a big difference. I'll try it > again > with my next computer (with DVD recorder). I think the results will be much > better. The life of a computer for me has averaged 3 years or less (usually > less), so I won't have to wait too long. Yes, me too. I think we're up to 7 now. I still don't have DVD or a flat screen . . . and you have to pay to have the old ones hauled away. Talk about adding insult to injury [:o) Lois