The rest of the story...

So... I didn't spend all of the bank holiday weekend asleep in the garden! In fact, I had just come back from a very exhausting (and fun) adventure. You probably didn't know this, but Ireland is playing host to the world's fastest sailing boats as they race around the world. The two week stopover here has turned out to be a lot of craic (a real festival atmosphere). The west coast greeted the boats as they came in last week with giant bonfires all along the coast. The fact that the boats started coming in around 1am didn't seem to dampen any of the excitement. The docklands where the boats are being kept have been transformed into a concert and exhibition fair ground, and free events are being held every day of the two weeks. On Saturday (before my nap in the garden) the boats went out for a set of short races. Before the races began, however, the 'Red Arrows' (The British version of the 'Blue Angels') performed a free exhibition. It is estimated that around 110,000 people showed up to sit on the beach and watch the races and exhibition. This great crowd and the hottest day of the year (around 74F) made the whole event a blast to see and photograph. I ended up going in with a couple of friends and walking around for a couple of hours... needless to say - I was exhausted when I got home. Here are a few pics from the day.



















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Making DVDs

Several of you have asked for me to explain how I converted our old 8mm, Beta, and VHS tapes to DVD... it really was not all that hard to do... but it did take me a long time.

I started out by investigating different companies that would transfer the films... I quickly discovered that this really was not an option. We had a ton of tapes in three different formats, and the cost to convert them all was far more than we wanted to pay.

In the end - it was a lot of fun to do it myself. It gave me an opportunity to watch all of these old films (many of which I had never seen) with my parents and family! We had a lot of fun reliving our family history!


Here is what I did:

8mm films
When we started - We were not even sure if any of the films had survived. We quickly discovered that they were in fairly good condition, and that the projector still worked perfectly.

1 - We set the projector up and projected the image onto a small screen. (Keeping the image small helped to make the images sharper.)
2 - We set up my Digital camcorder directly above the projector and filmed the movies as they played. Our camcorder films in high quality... and we were really pleased with the results.
3 - We took the digital recording on the camcorder and imported them onto my Mac. The Mac comes already loaded with software (IMovie) that allowed me to edit, add music, and even restore parts of the films. I have to say that I really am impressed with my little MacBook. The software are very easy to use and I learned how to restore the films very quickly.
4 - After importing them onto my computer... i mean MacBook... We used other software (iDVD) that came already loaded to create cool DVD menus and to burn the final products onto DVDs for my whole family.
I know that not everyone has a MacBook... and there is software out there that you can use on a PC... I just don't know what it is. sorry.


Beta films

- My father found (really did "find") a Beta player that still works. We then converted the old tapes to VHS and from there converted them to DVD (see that section).


VHS tapes

- I looked into several options on how to import directly from a VHS... but in the end used what we had. My father-in-law had purchsed a DVD/VHS combo that allows you to actually Dub tapes on to DVD. This machine is a Toshiba and is sold at BestBuy (click here to see the actual product). We were really pleased with the final product... but it did not allow you to edit your DVDs. If you wanted to clean them up and condense them from multiple DVDs into 1 you would have to import them to the MacBook and do it there.

I hope that helps a bit. Please don't hesitate to ask questions... I'll be glad to help if I can!

(ONE IMPORTANT NOTE: if you are going to burn DVDs you need to be sure and use DVD-R or DVD-RW. Other formats such (+) do not work in all players!)



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