As a follow up to yesterday's entry, I rolled another three tapes through an old 8mm analog camcorder and onto my hard disk via a capture card. I selected a trio of tapes from 1991. It was a spring vacation from Bahrain. We first flew into Sri Lanka and spent a few days with the family; subsequently, we went on to Thailand. We, of course, landed in Bangkok. Next, we made our way up to Changmai. We met colleague Don Richardson there. We also made it south to see both Pattaya and Phuket.It was interesting pulling up these images on my computer and television screens. Although a far cry from HDTV, they are more than sufficient to bring back forgotten memories. Movement and sound add a lot. Why doesn't my present digital camcorder ever leave the drawer, I wonder? I couldn't help but notice how much thinner I was fifteen years ago. Jay's the same size, he just had a lot of hair then. Small conversations were interesting. For example, I mentioned to a tourist that we were beginning to notice the black clouds from the Kuwaiti oil fires, down on our little island of residence. Those were the days of Gulf War I.
Getting this information burnt to DVDs is a long and boring process. It becomes so much more accessible when it is the new format though. I didn't even want to cut out the long sequences we shot when we were new to shooting video. With the remote that comes with the DVD player, it is very easy to rush through boring patches at 16X or greater.
The creative side of me thought about using editing software to remove mistakes and add music and transitions. Yet the archivist in me contends that capturing exactly what was on the tapes is a purer rendition of history.
