Tony Laubach
EF5
I've been spending a lot of time these last few months organizing nearly three decades of chasing stuff. Obviously a lot of the early stuff was shot and stored on physical media; Hi8, D8, miniDV. Most of what I have digitized from that era (say 2001 to 2009) is not limited to old DVDs I made with very little raw stuff surviving on anything but tapes. Many of my biggest early career chases have sat in boxes, with most of them not being moved in years.
One of the projects I am considering is a relaunch of my website, mainly for archiving purposes more than anything, but also to kinda reign in all my chasing logs into one cohesive place and format it all so that it's clean, easy to find, and add to as I go. It's a passion project that's kinda been reborn with me, but I'm a ways away from anything formal.
One of those pieces meant getting a lot of old chase video pulled from tapes. A one-to-one process I was just DREADING. In addition to the minute-for-minute time I'd need to invest to do that, I am also without the proper equipment, meaning I'd need to get my hands on a Hi8/Digital8 player as well as a miniDV player. While I probably could borrow one from someone, I was looking at what it would cost to buy used versions of both, and while reasonable, it still meant I would have to do all the work myself, and I just wasn't ready or able to invest the time.
Legacy Box is a company I've eyed for a couple years. Every Black Friday, they usually do some sort of deal that includes tapes. Like with most things, the advertised cost will be inflated when you include additional charges like shipping, physical media (USB drive) and such. But I was going to take the leap this Black Friday. Well, over the summer, thanks to Groupon, I was able to get a deal comparable to what I was budgeting for Black Friday. So I decided to test run the process, got a 10-tape deal and sent over 10 tapes which were mid-range wants; meaning if they were lost, I wouldn't be upset as I have most of the content from those tapes scattered about and none of the events on those tapes I was particularly connect to. It was a good middle ground.
The process took about 5 weeks in total from the day I shipped the tapes to the day I received all my tapes back. About a week prior, I got a notification that I could download the files, meaning I had access in about four weeks. Of the ten tapes, only one came back 'bad'; it was blue screen with audio (a dash cam tape I believe). The other 9 all came back with working SD video files that I would up-convert to HD. They looked damn good. I decided that I was happy with the process and bought three groupon deals to digitize another 60 tapes (three groups of 20). Included with my deal was rush processing, and as of today, 14 days later, I have all 60 tapes downloaded with one box already returned with the other two expected to arrive by Monday.
I have scrubbed through all 60 videos to check the contents. Most tapes were labeled in some way, so I knew generally what was on them, but a few had some footage from other days on the tape that weren't labeled. Of the 60 tapes, 1 came back all blue with no audio, and two were functional, but not greatest of shape. The other 57 came back great. I was really impressed.
How much did it cost? Each groupon ran about $190 for 20 tapes; that included the conversion and digital downloads, plus a USB drive, plus disc backups, and rush processing. How the groupon worked was you paid the $190 for the groupon that was $1000 worth of services. The gotcha was that it was good for one order, so anything leftover would be lost, and it was for the regular price of the services without any sale pricing. What I did was buy the 20-item bundle, and added rush processing, plus the discs and USB to get the most out of each groupon deal. Shipping was not included, so that added about $20 per order. Times that by 3 orders of 20-items, and I paid roughly $600 total ($10 per tape when all was said and done) and everything was available to me via download within two weeks. When you compare to the usual $8/tape sale, it was a tiny bit cheaper, but I also had rush processing and all the physical backups which would not be included. Adding those in a regular sale would further increase the difference. Without adding the rush and usb, it would be a bit more per tape.
Additionally, my wife and I went in on a photo scanning deal with them; which was 1000 photos scanned for $65 with the deal we got. We are awaiting the packing box to send all that in, but we're excited to get digital copies of a lot of old photos between the two of us. I'll report back on that experience in a handful of weeks.
Was it worth it? In my opinion yes. In total, I have about 110 tapes of my own plus a handful of TWISTEX tapes. Having done 70 in total without any real effort, I now get to spend the time doing the fun stuff and going through the tapes as opposed to trying to tackle all this on my own. Most of the tapes had at least an hour of footage, only a small handful had substantially less. Most of what I have not done yet are unlabeled tapes which could contain any number of chase days or other stuff (I had some Chaser Con stuff on one tape). Those may find their way to a digitizing at some point once I go through and catalog what I have to see if there are certain events I am missing that I may want to find. I also should note that a time-capsule video I took my sophomore year in high school back in Ohio was one of the 70 tapes; it has not ever seen the light of day since it was shot. That tape, now 27 years old, came back in full and OMG...
Depending on how much you have sitting around on physical media and your value of time verses money, but I was very impressed with the service. The turn-around time with rush processing was right at two weeks, and the normal was just shy of six weeks. But I have all the content in hand with 40 tapes enroute back to me that will be packed away to sit around and age like me. But the money to time was so worth it to me, and I am super excited to have a lot of this footage back in a format that I can do something with now 20+ years later.
One of the projects I am considering is a relaunch of my website, mainly for archiving purposes more than anything, but also to kinda reign in all my chasing logs into one cohesive place and format it all so that it's clean, easy to find, and add to as I go. It's a passion project that's kinda been reborn with me, but I'm a ways away from anything formal.
One of those pieces meant getting a lot of old chase video pulled from tapes. A one-to-one process I was just DREADING. In addition to the minute-for-minute time I'd need to invest to do that, I am also without the proper equipment, meaning I'd need to get my hands on a Hi8/Digital8 player as well as a miniDV player. While I probably could borrow one from someone, I was looking at what it would cost to buy used versions of both, and while reasonable, it still meant I would have to do all the work myself, and I just wasn't ready or able to invest the time.
Legacy Box is a company I've eyed for a couple years. Every Black Friday, they usually do some sort of deal that includes tapes. Like with most things, the advertised cost will be inflated when you include additional charges like shipping, physical media (USB drive) and such. But I was going to take the leap this Black Friday. Well, over the summer, thanks to Groupon, I was able to get a deal comparable to what I was budgeting for Black Friday. So I decided to test run the process, got a 10-tape deal and sent over 10 tapes which were mid-range wants; meaning if they were lost, I wouldn't be upset as I have most of the content from those tapes scattered about and none of the events on those tapes I was particularly connect to. It was a good middle ground.
The process took about 5 weeks in total from the day I shipped the tapes to the day I received all my tapes back. About a week prior, I got a notification that I could download the files, meaning I had access in about four weeks. Of the ten tapes, only one came back 'bad'; it was blue screen with audio (a dash cam tape I believe). The other 9 all came back with working SD video files that I would up-convert to HD. They looked damn good. I decided that I was happy with the process and bought three groupon deals to digitize another 60 tapes (three groups of 20). Included with my deal was rush processing, and as of today, 14 days later, I have all 60 tapes downloaded with one box already returned with the other two expected to arrive by Monday.
I have scrubbed through all 60 videos to check the contents. Most tapes were labeled in some way, so I knew generally what was on them, but a few had some footage from other days on the tape that weren't labeled. Of the 60 tapes, 1 came back all blue with no audio, and two were functional, but not greatest of shape. The other 57 came back great. I was really impressed.
How much did it cost? Each groupon ran about $190 for 20 tapes; that included the conversion and digital downloads, plus a USB drive, plus disc backups, and rush processing. How the groupon worked was you paid the $190 for the groupon that was $1000 worth of services. The gotcha was that it was good for one order, so anything leftover would be lost, and it was for the regular price of the services without any sale pricing. What I did was buy the 20-item bundle, and added rush processing, plus the discs and USB to get the most out of each groupon deal. Shipping was not included, so that added about $20 per order. Times that by 3 orders of 20-items, and I paid roughly $600 total ($10 per tape when all was said and done) and everything was available to me via download within two weeks. When you compare to the usual $8/tape sale, it was a tiny bit cheaper, but I also had rush processing and all the physical backups which would not be included. Adding those in a regular sale would further increase the difference. Without adding the rush and usb, it would be a bit more per tape.
Additionally, my wife and I went in on a photo scanning deal with them; which was 1000 photos scanned for $65 with the deal we got. We are awaiting the packing box to send all that in, but we're excited to get digital copies of a lot of old photos between the two of us. I'll report back on that experience in a handful of weeks.
Was it worth it? In my opinion yes. In total, I have about 110 tapes of my own plus a handful of TWISTEX tapes. Having done 70 in total without any real effort, I now get to spend the time doing the fun stuff and going through the tapes as opposed to trying to tackle all this on my own. Most of the tapes had at least an hour of footage, only a small handful had substantially less. Most of what I have not done yet are unlabeled tapes which could contain any number of chase days or other stuff (I had some Chaser Con stuff on one tape). Those may find their way to a digitizing at some point once I go through and catalog what I have to see if there are certain events I am missing that I may want to find. I also should note that a time-capsule video I took my sophomore year in high school back in Ohio was one of the 70 tapes; it has not ever seen the light of day since it was shot. That tape, now 27 years old, came back in full and OMG...
Depending on how much you have sitting around on physical media and your value of time verses money, but I was very impressed with the service. The turn-around time with rush processing was right at two weeks, and the normal was just shy of six weeks. But I have all the content in hand with 40 tapes enroute back to me that will be packed away to sit around and age like me. But the money to time was so worth it to me, and I am super excited to have a lot of this footage back in a format that I can do something with now 20+ years later.
