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As the world moves towards technological changes, more and more people are making changes in their lives. One of the changes that many people are keen on making is digitizing their old photo albums. Although there’s something unique and nostalgic about flipping through photo albums, there are also some fascinating and compelling reasons to consider digitizing your pictures.  This blog will discuss some of the benefits of digitizing your old photos.  Preserve Your Memories One of the primary reasons to digitize your photos is to preserve your memories. As time passes by, physical pictures can get damaged, become faded, or get lost. By digitizing them, you can ensure they’re safe and sound for longer, even if something happens to your physical copies. Additionally, digital pictures can be easily backed up to the cloud or shared so you can access them anywhere.  Make Them Easily Accessible Another benefit of digitizing your photos is that they become much more easily accessible. Instead of looking through numerous boxes and albums to find a specific picture, you can simply look it up on your phone or computer. This also makes it much easier for you to share your old pictures with friends and family. And this also makes it more likely that you’ll look at your pictures more often.  Improve The Quality If you have old pictures that are damaged or faded, digitizing them can be an excellent way to enhance the quality. Photo digitizing services use amazing photo editing tools to restore old pictures, including fixing the color, adjusting exposure, and removing scratches.  In addition, once you have the digital file, you can easily print it out or make different copies without worrying about damaging the original picture.   Save Space Physical photo albums usually take up a lot of room, which can easily become problematic if you don’t have enough space in your house. Digitizing your pictures frees up some space and eliminates huge, bulky boxes or albums. Plus, you can store all your pictures in one place without worrying about the shortage of storage and organize them however you wish. Preserve Your Family History Your old family pictures aren’t only a collection of snapshots but an essential part of your family history. Digitizing your old photo albums allows you to preserve your family history for generations. It allows you to easily share them with relatives and keep them tagged with dates and names to pass accurate information along with the pictures. If you’re looking for a way to preserve your memories for generations, our photo digitizing experts at Pictures 2 Digital can help. We’re equipped with the expertise to improve the quality of faded pictures and let you easily store them on your computer, share them with friends and family and cherish them for days to come.  We also offer VHS to DVD conversion services, scanning pictures scanning services, and much more.  Visit our website to learn more. 

With so many VHS tapes lying around and all the DIY conversion videos on YouTube, it can be very tempting to try out the process on your own. However, we must tell you, it’s not the best idea.  A DIY home movie transfer for downsizing isn’t impossible; many people are able to convert their home video to digital formats on their own using conversion kits and online tutorials. However, there’s a lot of margin for things to go wrong, and you may end up losing your footage.  Here are some other reasons you should consider professional services instead.  You May Lose Data  When you’re converting a video from one codec to the other, i.e., transcoding it, the compression will also be converted, resulting in data loss. Many people don’t actually know this happens, and as a result, they keep transcoding the video again and again, to get the full version, but what essentially happens is more loss of data and overall deterioration of the tape.  Professionals don’t make these mistakes, of course; they know the correct formats they’re supposed to encode the file in and know how to keep the video intact.  You May End Up with Unstable Or Choppy Recordings  Ideally, when you convert your VHS tapes to digital versions or DVDs, you want them to be better quality. However, if you’re DIY-ing this, there is a massive chance that you’ll end up with worse-quality versions.  This may happen for a lot of reasons. For starters, you don’t necessarily have the right tools. For instance, your conversion kit may not have a time-base correction. This can cause the frames the be dropped or skipped out, or it may even fail to record the whole video.  Also, you probably don’t have the right computer, hardware, and software included that’s needed for a smooth conversion. The capture software you’re using may be disrupted by other applications or software running in the background. Also, the drive could be too full, which could also result in unstable video conversion.  The Process Is More Extensive Than You Think It may not have occurred to you, but modern TVs and computer displays aren’t interlaced. This means that you don’t see pictures on them the same way as you would on an older medium. These modern devices have something called a progressive scan instead.   When an analog video is converted to a digital format, the frames have to be converted from interlaced to progressive through de-interlacing. Without de-interlacing, your video may have a lot of issues. These will range from double images to jagged edges. Sometimes, people use field-bending to preserve the original frames in their entirety, but this still affects video quality in other ways.  You Could Lose Precious Memories  One reason we don’t recommend DIY video conversions at all is that it’s too much work with too much risk. Your precious memories are essentially at stake here, and we wouldn’t want you to lose them.  Let us handle your VHS to DVD conversions instead. At Pictures 2 Digital, we offer picture scanning services as well as analog tape to digital processing.  Give us a call for more information.   

Do you keep thinking about digitizing your home videos but never get around to the task? Here’s why you need to stop procrastinating about it.  Your Home Videos Could Be Lost in A Natural Disaster  While we all hope this will never happen, natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, or wildfires don’t always come announced. If you’re lucky enough to escape, you probably won’t even have time to gather essentials like wallets and phones, let alone your home videos. There’s a high chance they will be lost or destroyed.  Digital files backed up on the cloud will still remain accessible, even in the worst disasters.  The Home Videos Will Eventually Succumb to Wear and Tear Home videos stored on VHS tapes won’t last forever. In fact, even DVDs have a very short lifespan—about 5 years. To make sure your tapes last forever, you’d have to go to lengths to store them properly, ensuring there’s no dust or debris that could lead to scratches.  Also, you’d have to maintain the right sun exposure, temperature, and humidity to avoid warping or fading. Alternatively, a digital video doesn’t get affected by physical elements in the same way.  Your VCR May Break Down  Is your VCR still working? Well, what if it breaks down and you’re unable to fix it? Companies that used to make VCRs are no longer in business, or they’ve shifted production to other devices and more modern technology.  This means you could end up with a ton of VHS tapes with your memories on them with no VCR to play them for you! Digitized Videos Can Be Watched on Many Different Screens This is one of our favorite parts about digitizing home videos—they can be watched anywhere! A VCR can only be connected to a TV, and you can only watch your VHS tapes on television—but let’s be real, when was the last time you sat down to watch TV?  We use our laptops, phones, and tablets a lot more frequently than we use televisions. Digitizing home videos would make them more accessible, and they won’t sit ignored in your living room under the television.  It’ll Be Easier to Share the Digitized Versions  Another amazing benefit of digitizing videos is that you get to share them with friends and family a lot more easily! Once you digitize a home video, you can make as many copies as you like and share them with your family on WhatsApp, email, or even on your drive or cloud.  This will jog everyone’s memories and bring the family together, reminding you of your happiest memories made together.  So, are you ready to digitize your memories to preserve them forever? Let us help you out! At Pictures 2 Digital, we can help you convert home movies to DVDs and other digital formats. We can also help you with video restoration after a natural disaster and provide a digital photo conversion service!  Give us a call to discuss it all further!