The world of analog devices has almost disappeared, but the storage media still remain. Today I will tell you how I encountered the need to digitize and store home archive data. I hope that my experience will help you choose the right devices for digitizing and save a lot of money by doing the digitizing yourself.
“What is this, what is this?
"Oh, it's a plague, comrade major!" Admire: this is a transmitting antenna with a power supply, this is a camera, but it does not have a recording head, this is one, there is no cassette either, this is two, and in general, how it turns on, too, the devil will figure it out, this is three.
(Feature film "Genius", 1991)
Would you like to open the "time capsule" and hear the young voices of your parents? To see what your grandfather looked like in his youth, or to see how people lived 50 years ago? And by the way, many still have this opportunity. On the mezzanines, in chests of drawers and closets, analog data carriers are still waiting in the wings. How realistic is it to subtract and digitize them? This is the question I asked myself and decided to act.
Video recordings
It all started about 5 years ago, when on a well-known Chinese site I saw an inexpensive USB keychain for digitizing analog sources with the name EasyCAP. Since a certain number of VHS tapes were stored in the pantry, I decided to buy this thing and see what was on the video tapes. Since I don’t have a TV in principle, and the VCR went to the trash in 2006, I had to find a working device in order to play VHS at all.
Going to another well-known site with ads for the sale of all sorts of things, I found a video player LG Wl42W VHS format literally in the house next door and bought it for the price of two cups of coffee. Along with the video player, I also got an RCA cable.
I connected all this stuff to the computer and began to deal with the program that came with the kit. Everything was intuitive there, so after two or three days all the VHS tapes were digitized, and the video player was sold on the same site. What conclusion I made for myself: the videos were on average 20 years old and most of them were suitable for digitization. Only one of the two dozen records turned out to be partially damaged, and it was not possible to read it completely.
I climbed to rake the pantry further and came across 9 video cassettes of the Sony Video8 format. Do you remember the TV show "Your own director", which was even before the advent of Youtube and TikTok? In those years, portable analog video cameras were extremely popular.
The mainstream then were the following formats:
- betacam;
- VHS Compact;
- Video8.
Each of the formats also had variations, so I had to first carefully read about each of them before trying to find equipment on which I could play the cassettes I found.
The main problem that greatly delayed this process in time was that there were few used video cameras of this format, and they cost some unrealistic money. After a couple of weeks of watching the ads, I found one where they asked for a little less than 1000 rubles for a video camera, and bought myself Sony Handycam CCD-TR330E.
It turned out to be very battered by life, with a split LCD screen, but when connected to the analog output of a USB key fob, it worked quite tolerably. There was no power supply included, no batteries. He got out of the situation with the help of a laboratory power supply and wires with "crocodiles". The tape drive was surprisingly in good condition, allowing me to count all of these videotapes. My oldest Video8 tape was from 1997. The result - 9 out of 9 cassettes were considered without problems. The camcorder met the same fate as the video player - a couple of days later it was bought from me for the same digitization purposes.
The first part of the epic with digitization ended quickly enough. EasierCAP went to the box, where it remained until recently. Two years later, it was time to overhaul the apartment of relatives, which automatically meant only one thing: the pantry needed to be completely vacated. It was then that a huge number of rare storage media were discovered:
- several dozen audio cassettes;
- vinyl records;
- magnetic diskettes 3.5 inches;
- reels with magnetic tape;
- old photographs and negatives.
The idea to save this goodness and convert it to digital form came almost immediately. I still had a lot of difficulties before getting the expected result.
Photos and negatives
It was the first thing I wanted to keep. Lots of old photographs and films taken with Zenit-B. At that time, it was necessary to try very hard to get beautiful shots. High-quality photographic film was in short supply, but even that was not the point. The film had to be developed and printed, often at home.
Therefore, along with films and photographs, I found a large number of chemical glassware, photographic enlargers, a red lamp, framing frames, containers for reagents, and tons of other devices and consumables. Someday later I will try to go through the entire cycle of obtaining photographs on my own.
So, I had to purchase a device capable of digitizing negatives and ordinary photographs. Poryskav on ads, found a great flatbed scanner HP ScanJet 4570c, which has a separate slide module for scanning film. It cost me only 500 rubles.
Digitization took a very long time. For more than two weeks every day for several hours, I had to perform the same operation of viewing and scanning. For convenience, I had to cut the film into pieces that fit into the slide module. The work was done, and I still use this scanner. I was extremely pleased with the quality of his work.
3.5 inch floppy disks
Gone are the days when a floppy disk drive was an essential attribute for any system unit, laptop and even a musical synthesizer (the author still has a Yamaha PSR-740 with a floppy drive). Now floppy disks are a rarity, practically not used with the ubiquity of the Internet and cheap Flash drives.
Of course, one could buy an ancient system unit with a floppy drive at a flea market, but a USB drive caught my eye. I bought it for a nominal sum. I was wondering if floppy disks written between 1999 and 2004 would be readable.
The result, to put it mildly, was discouraging. Less than half of all available floppy disks have been read. All the rest were filled with errors when copying or were not read at all. The conclusion is simple: floppy disks do not live that long, so if you have these drives stored somewhere, then most likely they no longer carry any useful information.
Audio cassettes
The history of audio cassettes (otherwise they were called compact cassettes) began in 1963, but they received mass distribution in 1970 and held the lead for as long as 20 years. They were replaced by CDs, and the era of magnetic audio media was over. Nevertheless, many people still have audio cassettes with different music gathering dust on their mezzanines. How to subtract them in the 21st century?
I had to turn to a friend, an avid collector of audio equipment, and ask him for a few days of the famous "Cobra" (Panasonic RX-DT75), which received such a nickname for a very original appearance. In fact, any audio player would do, but with live belts (drive belts), they are quite difficult to find.
Magnetic tape reels
I still remember myself as a little boy playing with the Snezhet-203 tape recorder. The kit included a microphone and headphones, so I messed around recording my voice at speed 9 and playing back at speed 4. Almost like in the famous movie "Home Alone", where Kevin McCallister used the Tiger Electronics voice recorder, .
More than two decades have passed since then, and the records have been lying in the pantry, waiting to be brought to light. The tape recorder itself was also found there, already made in 1979. Perhaps this was the most interesting quest. If finding a vintage video camera or floppy drive is not a problem, then restoring the performance of a tape recorder that is over 40 years old is not a trivial task. To begin with, it was decided to open the case and thoroughly blow out the insides from dust.
Visually, everything looked good, except for the belts. Years in the pantry destroyed the unfortunate rubber bands, which simply crumbled in the hands. There are three passes in total. The main one is for the engine, the additional one is for the reel and one more for the counter. The easiest way was to change the third one (any elastic band for bills is suitable). But the first two I began to look for on ad sites. In the end, I bought a repair kit from a seller from Tambov (apparently, he specializes in repairing vintage equipment). A week later, I received a letter with two new belts. I'll never know - either they are so well preserved, or they are still being produced somewhere.
While the belts were driving towards me, I turned on the tape recorder to check the network and checked that the motor was working properly. I cleaned and lubricated all rubbing metal parts with machine oil, and treated the rubber parts and the playback head with isopropyl alcohol. I also had to change a couple of stretched springs. And here is the moment of truth. Belts installed, reels installed. Playback has started.
And immediately the first disappointment - there was no sound. Got into the manual, checked the position of the switches. Everything was right. So, you need to disassemble and see where the sound is lost. The source of the problem was discovered very quickly. One of the glass fuses visually looked normal, but it turned out to be broken “by ringing”. Replaced it with a similar one and voila. The sound appeared.
My surprise knew no bounds. The film was preserved almost perfectly, despite the fact that no one touched or rewound it in the pantry. And in my mind I already imagined that I would have to bake it, as described in . I did not solder the adapter, but used a professional studio microphone for recording. I removed background noise using the standard features of a free audio editor. .
Vinyl records
Interestingly, this is perhaps the only type of rare storage media for which equipment is still being produced. Vinyl has long been used by DJs, and therefore the equipment is always available. Moreover, even inexpensive players have a digitizing function. Such a device will be an excellent gift for the older generation, which can easily put on their favorite record and listen to their usual music.
I'm doing
Well, I digitized everything and began to think - how now to store all these photographs, negatives, video and audio recordings? I destroyed the original media so as not to take up space, and digital copies should be stored securely.
You should choose a format that I can read in a conditional 20 years. Such a format to which I can find a reader that will be convenient to store and subtract if necessary. Based on the experience gained, I wanted to use a modern streamer and record everything on magnetic tape, but streamers are godlessly expensive and they simply do not exist in the SOHO segment. Keeping a tape library at home is unwise, placing it in a data center just for the sake of “cold storage” is expensive.
The choice fell on single-layer DVDs. Yes, they are not very capacious, but they are still being produced, as well as the equipment for recording them. They are durable, easy to store, and easy to count when needed. Habré was quite informative , but not so long ago I had a chance to read DVDs recorded 10 years ago and forgotten in the country. All were considered without problems the first time, although the defects described in the article (“bronzing” of disks) began to appear. Therefore, it was decided to ensure ideal storage conditions for backups, read and rewrite to new disks every 5 years.
In the end, I did the following:
- One copy is stored at home on the local QNAP-D2 NAS without any redundancy.
- The second copy is filled in .
- The third copy is on DVD. Each disc is duplicated twice.
Recorded discs are stored at home, each in an individual box, without access to light, inside a vacuum-packed plastic bag. Silica gel was placed inside the bag to reliably protect the contents from moisture. I hope that this will allow them to be counted without problems even in 10 years.
Instead of a conclusion
My experience has shown that it is not too late to start digitizing analog media. As long as there are live devices to play and pull the data is real. However, every year the chance of media becoming unusable increases, so don't delay.
Why all these difficulties with the purchase of devices, was it really impossible to just contact the digitization workshop and get the finished result? The answer is simple - it is very expensive. Prices for digitizing a video cassette reach 25 rubles per minute, and you will have to pay immediately for the entire cassette. It is impossible to find out what is on it without reading it in its entirety. That is, for one VHS video cassette with a capacity of 180 minutes, one would have to pay from 2880 to 4500 rubles.
According to my approximate calculations, one would have to pay about 100 thousand rubles just for the digitization of videocassettes. I'm not talking about audio and photos. My method became an interesting hobby for several months and cost me only 5-7 thousand rubles. The emotions, however, exceeded all expectations and gave my family a lot of joy from the opportunity to relive the moments captured on the films.
Have you already digitized your home archive? Maybe it's time to do it?
Only registered users can participate in the survey. , you are welcome.
Have you already digitized your home archive?
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37,7%Yes, everything is digitized23
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9,8%No, I'm just going to give it to digitization6
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31,2%No, I'll digitize it myself19
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21,3%Not going to digitize
61 users voted. 9 users abstained.
On what media is your home archive stored?
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80,0%Hard drives44
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18,2%NAS10
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34,6%Cloud storage19
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49,1%CDs or DVDs27
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1,8%Streamer tapes LTO1
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14,6%Flash drives8
55 users voted. 13 users abstained.
Source: habr.com