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Old family films

(11 Posts)
Willow500 Sun 10-Jun-18 06:31:09

Last night we spent a very happy couple of hours with my SIL & BIL looking through lots of old home videos from the very early 80's to a few months ago which I transferred to my iPad ages ago and sent to the tv. We laughed like drains at the fashions, our hair (mine in particular was never the same colour or style on any of them!) and my SIL's glasses (one pair in particular were like Deirdre Barlows huge round ones) and our varying body shapes and sizes (mostly increasing!). It was also lovely to see our parents and kids when they were small. It made me realise how lucky we are to have lived through the era of video recording and how precious these bits of films are. I know out there somewhere is an old cine film of me as a child taken by a family friend but sadly I've never seen it.

Does anyone else take trips down memory lane like this?

Nanabilly Sun 10-Jun-18 07:42:27

It sounds wonderful!
I would love to do that but we only ever had a camera as a family, an old box brownie and pictures were always carefully considered due to the cost of printing the photographs.
Glad you enjoyed your evening , I bet today you may get a little melancholy thinking of those family days.
I love to sit with my sisters and look through old albums.

gillybob Sun 10-Jun-18 07:58:07

A couple of years back my DH and I made a slide show of old family photos and set it to various pieces of music and special songs. The photos went back to my grandparents when they were young right up to my own grandchildren .
We had a family night at ours where 5 generations of us sat and watched it. It was very special. 2 years later we have lost my grandma and my mum so its quite sad watching It now. So glad we did it though.

NfkDumpling Sun 10-Jun-18 08:01:57

I’ve got loads of video tapes of holidays past and did borrow a machine to transfer them to DVD, but as they’re all in little clips it didn’t work. How did you transfer them to your iPad Willow?

DanniRae Sun 10-Jun-18 08:11:16

My daughter has lots of old films showing our parents, now sadly gone. Also my son - now 33 - literally turning 13 to see if he turned into a nightmare teenager at midnight! (He never did). I also have many, many photo albums and when my son's fiance first started visiting she used to ask to see the ones with him growing up, year by year. (I am not sure if she was just being polite but she seemed to enjoy looking at them!) grin

Willow500 Sun 10-Jun-18 08:35:25

gillybob we also did that some years ago - it was both happy and sad set to music - we really need to get that transferred at some point.

NfkDumpling I spent some time ages ago with the video player connected to my pc and a piece of software which converted the files to digital format - I think I put them on DVD first and then transferred them to my iMac - then to the iPad. I must have used a piece of hardware too but can't remember what or where I've put it confused There are some Youtube videos explaining how to do it. I think the biggest problem now is that not many people still have a VHS player to be able to do it. Once it was set up it was fairly easy to do.

NfkDumpling Sun 10-Jun-18 08:41:32

Will try again. DSiL gave us an ancient VHS player but it took forever as the video was recoded in tiny snippets and it had to be restarted for each one! I think I lost the will power to carry on! I’d like to just save a few bits for posterity.

ninathenana Sun 10-Jun-18 08:52:13

Like Nanabilly growing up the family only had a stills camera and I have only a dozen or so photos of that era. I would love to have film.

Neighbours lent H a video camera to bring to the hospital when DS was born but the 15 min film is spoilt by the sound of H and I talking about how to use the camera as we didn't realise we were recording sound smile It's the only film we have.
Your evening sounds wonderful Willow

Fennel Sun 10-Jun-18 16:46:09

We had lots of family videos, but they've disappeared in our various moves. One in particular I'd love to see again - my parents' golden wedding party. So many people there who have gone to a better place.
One problem was there used to be 2 methods of video recording - VHS and Betamax. Ours were on Betamax, and it was difficult to convert to a more modern system.
But we've got loads of old photos, nearly as good.

callgirl1 Sun 10-Jun-18 18:24:42

We bought our cine camera in 1970, and it was in regular use until about 1984. We never got to see the films much in later years, because hubby said the bulbs for the projector were very expensive, so he didn`t like it on for too long, therefore we only ever saw the same films over and over, because every time they were the ones most requested. Anyway, a few years ago, I gathered up all the films in their little yellow packets and took them to a friend who has a videoing business, and paid him to transfer them onto 3 dvds. Now I can look at them whenever I like.

pollyperkins Sun 10-Jun-18 19:27:16

We have had some cine films transferred to video and now to DVDs which we love to watch (though all are silent and have had a musical soundtrack added.) But we also have some cassette tape recordings of our children when they were young (as well as some even older reel to reel tapes with other people including my parents' voices on.) Is there any way we could get these onto CDs ,does anyone know?