Bob Hennessey has been an avid videographer since the early 1990s, and has shot video in just about every format possible.
Having shot video way back in the “analog” days and having stacks of video tapes it became a labor of love transferring the old analog tapes to digital formats.
How It All Started
Back in early 1990 after getting my first job out of college in the Boston area I joined a ski house with some work friends spending weekends at Sugarbush Vermont.
One of my friends in my ski house had a Sony Sports camcorder that shot in Video 8 format and had waterproof gaskets all over it. He spent most of his time skiing with the locals hot-shot skiers and making a home grown ski video with the footage he shot.
Instantly I was hooked on video!
Sadly he was out of the ski house the following year so I bought my own Sony Sports camcorder, stuffed a backpack with pillows to protect it, and was out on the slopes the next year shooting video with the same bunch of skiers.
The Analog Days
The “Analog Days” of video were painful. Editing was done manually tape to tape on VCRs, every copy of the video getting worse.
While its nice to have the original source of video on tapes I did notice some degraded sooner than others which was very concerning.
Originally downloading and editing video on a computer were way out of my budget and not even possible on most household computers. Hard drives were slow and expensive, and video capture cards and editing software cost several thousands of dollars.
Eventually computers became faster, analog to video capture cards became more affordable, and I cut my teeth on a capture card bundled with Adobe Premiere 5.0.
Converting Analog Video to Digital
As hard drives became cheaper and had more space I realized I needed to back up all of my old analog tapes into a digital format.
Even the digital video tapes that I shot in Digital 8 and Mini DV I wanted to transfer to digital because all tapes oxidize eventually and I never wanted to lose any of my good footage.
From using analog to video capture cards, analog to USB, and firewire cards I’ve been through most of the hurdles that people jump through to get their video transferred to a digital format.
I’ve also uploaded some of the old and new video to YouTube and my ski video website WreckingCrewProductions.com if you want to check any of it out.
Please enjoy the content on this site and I hope it helps you transfer your video tapes to digital, and answers any of your questions along the way.