We received a phone call today from one upset woman. She explained her husband had died in May after a sudden illness.

With the holidays approaching, she wanted to do put some of the photos her husband had taken into a music video montage for her kids. “It’s a beautiful way to celebrate his life, the places he was, the vacations he took with them…“, she added

Here’s the problem: there were 31 carousels of slides that were completely unlabeled. Each slide carousel had 100 to 140 slides, so we’re talking thousands of slides here. Even after I offered her to view her slides at our store – we have viewing stations for these old memory media – going through thousands of slides still seemed very daunting to her. So we decided a different approach. She’ll randomly pick a carousel to go through, view the slides, and pick out the ones that touched her. Then she’ll do another carousel. The minute she finds 50 slides she can use for the video montage, she will stop.

The slides she picks will be from different periods of their family lives, may not even be contiguous periods, but it’ll still be a beautiful video slideshow.

So ladies and gentleman, label your memory media. These days, you’re not recording in 8mm film reels, VHS tapes, Hi8 tapes, it’s all digital. Label your digital file folders. If you backup family photos in hard drives, label the hard drives. Maybe fifty years from now, someone is trying to piece your life together, make it easy for them.

Today, I learned from a customer that “Play it again, Sam.” is one of the top film misquote. Meaning, never in the film Casablanca, did anyone utter the phrase, “Play it Again, Sam.” “No way”, you say. That was my reaction too. But read it for yourself in the Top 15 Film Misquote.

The phrase is often believed to have been said by Bogart in the movie, Casablanca. In fact, Bogart never said it quite like that. The closest he came to the phrase was: “You played it for her, you can play it for me…If she can stand it, I can. Play it!” How about Ingrid Bergman’s character? What she actually said was “Play it, Sam.” Doesn’t it make you want to watch Casablanca all over again, just to prove this yourself?

We are Play it Again Video. But we answer to Play it Again, Sam too. After all, at least once a week, someone calls and asks, ‘Is this Play it Again Sam? I need to transfer my old home movies to DVD.”

This guy, Mark, came in with old Super 8mm home movies from his mom’s attic.  He didn’t know what was on it, so he brought the film in to view them on our projector to decide whether he wanted to spend the money to convert the Super 8mm film to DVD or not.  He kept shaking his head when he watched them.  I was puzzled why little happy kids running around on the old home movie should be so objectionable.

I understood when Mark commented, “Wow, I  have been going to therapy for the last 10 years trying to undo my childhood.  What do you know, turns out my childhood is not so bad after all.  Here’s the evidence.”  That is precisely why I take a lot of home videos.  So if my children end up in therapy accusing me of total parental neglect, I can whip out these videos and say, “Here’s the evidence, I took you to the zoo, I took you camping, etc.”

Capture your good times, and remember to publicize them, especially to the kids, over and over and over again.  Because according to Kodak, every kid has a happy childhood.

If you can’t remember what your childhood is like, go dig out those old 8mm film reels, or 16mm film reels from the attic and convert those old home movies to DVD so you can watch them again.  It may change what you remember about your childhood.  For the better, I hope.

Rush job today.  Needed it by 4 pm. For a court trial the next morning.

It was a surveillance tape (VHS) that needed to be transferred to DVD ASAP. A company had been missing valuable art pieces from their walls.  Over the years, the business owner had treated himself to expensive work of art to grace the walls of the office he spent so much of his life in.  Mysteriously, pieces of art work were disappearing.  Stolen.  He didn’t have any surveillance camera in his office. After all, he had built a close-knit team that worked so long and so close together, they were like family. Setting up a surveillance camera to monitor their every move was the last thing on his mind.

He consulted the building’s security team to see if he had any ideas. The security officer had an idea.  Though there were no surveillance cameras in his office, there was a surveillance camera in the lobby.  Since the company’s office was on the 23rd floor, most probably, the thief would take the elevator.  Based on the date of the disappearance of the last art piece, the security officer pinpointed the surveillance VHS tape to inspect.

You may wonder, a VHS tape can only store up to 120 minutes, how does it capture a day’s worth of lobby comings and goings.  I learned that surveillance camera records in a funny way.  Something about multiple number of frames per seconds so that when you watch a VHS surveillance tape, the video timecode on the tape goes multiple times faster than real time (the number of seconds that lapse on your watch).  That’s how a whole day’s worth of recordings can fit on a VHS tape.

Enough of technical trivia, I’m sure you want to get to the bottom of the story.

Once the VHS tape was transferred to a DVD, it was much easier to go through the video on the computer and spot the ‘thief’.  How was the thief identified?  He walked out of the elevator with a mysterious bulge around the waist.  Sadly, the business owner identified the thief as one of his regular clients.  When the owner compared records and dates of the client’s visits, they coincided with dates art pieces disappeared off the wall.

Most of our customer stories are heart-warming touching.  This one is not so heart-warming, I’m sorry to say.

At Play it Again Video, a VHS to DVD transfer lab in Boston, we are not just performing a technical process of turning old VHS/VCR tapes to digital formats. We are protecting precious memories; there is a story behind every film/video transfer job. Other more heart-warming Customer Stories:

• She used to be so little
• I am looking for my father

Play it Again Video has been around for over 24 years. We serve about 10 customers a day, that’s 3,500 customers a year, that’s about 84,000 customers out there spreading the word.
Still, to be heard as far away as in Prague, Czech Republic. That’s something.

Yet, that’s what this guy said. His friends in Prague told him to come to Play it Again Video to transfer his VHS tapes to DVD.

Are you still hanging on to VHS tapes? VHS tapes are not meant to last forever. The magnetic media that VHS tapes, and other analog tapes: Video 8, 8mm tapes are made of degrade with time even if you keep it in cool, dry, dark condition.

Wayne Alpert has successfully trained professional basketball players since 1985.

He came to Play it Again Video to capture highlights of his training program into a video that can be shared publicly. His team of trainers has now expanded their training programs to young aspiring players of all ages, starting at age 10 and above.

“Imitating moves is not understanding basket ball. Understanding excellence is.”, says Wayne. And that’s a difference that has made his training so effective.

“I love working with Play it Again Video. Their patience and perseverance help me come into the 21st Century. I’m sure we’ll be doing many video projects together.”, adds Wayne.

If your son or daughter is passionate about playing their basketball, you should really contact Wayne. His office is right in Newton and he can be reached at (617) 233 6924.

Janet came in with 16mm film reels she stole from her mother’s home.

Sidetrack: We are confidante to a lot of family film thefts. The thefts are necessary as many older parents are extremely nervous about letting precious irreplaceable film reels – 8mm, Super 8, or 16mm – out of their home. So their adult children have to ‘steal’ them for a while to bring them to our store to have the old home movies transferred to DVD.

Back to Janet. She said the 16mm film reels had videos of her parents wedding and the many trips they took early in their marriage. They had met at Cornell. And Janet had with her a CD by the Cornell Glee Club: Songs of Cornell that she wanted to be added as background music to the film. I thought that was so sweet, so clever.

I am very touched by the clever ideas people have to make something extra special for their loved ones. I give brownie points to adult children – just for bringing in their parents’ old home movies to turn into gifts for them. But when they put in that extra thought, like Janet, to find a CD with songs from her parents’ alma mater to be put in the background, I am just so touched I want to do the service for free for them. But you know I can’t.

I am really looking forward to this finished DVD. With songs names like these: Big Red Team, Fight for Cornell, Give my Regards to Davy, Cornell Champions – this is going to be one awesome 50th anniversary gift for Janet’s parents. She’d better include a box of tissues in the gift bag.

If Cornell is your alma mater, and you are nostalgic for the Big Read Team, you can hear these songs here: Songs of Cornell Page

I shouldn’t have left him alone. I should have known better. That was risky. But I had a line up of customers waiting for me, keeping them waiting while he took his own sweet time wasn’t right either. So I walked away and left him alone.

He had walked into the store like many others: “I’d like to watch these Hi8 tapes, want to see what they are before I spend money transferring them to DVD.”

So I set him up at a station with a Hi8 tape player. He must have had a dozen tapes, some Sony Hi8, some 8mm tapes, a couple of VHS tapes. When he saw other customers come in the store, he said, “You take care of them, I know how to press the Rewind and Play buttons.” So I left him alone.

After I took care of the line of customers, I came back to check up on him. It couldn’t be more than 15-20 minutes.

He was hunched up, head bowed, hands rubbing the bridge of his nose. He seemed startled to see me, obviously his videos had taken him somewhere else, a long ago place, a long ago time. And he was crying. His face was a blend of pain and pride. I could barely make out his words, “She used to be so little.” I looked at the video player and I saw a chubby, curly haired, toddler waddling through the screen, dragging a toy duckie.

I said, “Well, I’m sorry, you shouldn’t have blinked. That’s what happens when you blink – they turn into teenagers. You blink twice, they are young adults.”

Turns out, his daughter is still 13. Still lots of opportunities to enjoy her before he’ll be saying in a few years, “She used to be a teenager …”.

Related Posts:

What is the shelf-life of a video tape?
Slides and Photos Scanning

Samir*, a youthful looking, dark-haired man of Indian descent, came into the store with a bag of 8mm film reels cans. “I’m here to view these film reels”, he explains.

We set him up on a desk with a film projector, and gave him a 10 minute demo on how to playback his Super 8 film.
Samir took the boxes of reels out of the bag, some had labels, some didn’t, some look very beat up, some in pristine film boxes.

I asked Samir if there was an event, a wedding, or a family reunion that prompted him to transfer his old home movies to DVD. Samir said, “Nope. I am turning 40, I’m looking for my father“. Samir went on to explain his father had passed away when he was 4. He didn’t have any videos of him except for what’s on the film. Turning 40 raised a desire to connect with this person who had gone away and missed a chance to see a child grow up.

He carefully looked through each and every film reel. 40 minutes later, “I found him!” I came over and looked, I wish his own family were there to share this special moment with him. As he cranked the film projector with his hand, images of a birthday party flew by. A 2 year-old boy posing with his cake, a beaming father behind him, hand on his son’s shoulder. In a faraway place, Pakistan, he said, and in a far-away time, 36 years ago.

* Our customer stories are real, but the names have been changed.

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What is the shelf-life of a video tape?
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