How I Digitized Family Memories in Negatives, CD, and VHS with the Forever Box (and WHY!)

I'm old enough to know that technology is amazing, except that it comes and goes.  

All the slides my father took of our family trip to Greece and Italy when I was 1 year old can only be viewed with a slide projector (Google that if you need to) and a big screen.

That makes our precious family memories endangered.

Maybe "endangered" seems like a strong, harsh word.  Trust me:  it's accurate!  I'll tell you why, and how I got my own outdated media out of danger.  (I'm so excited to tell you about it because I'm so happy with the result!)

Family Movies on VHS Tapes 

When my in-laws found out we were expecting our first baby, they bought us a video camera.  I was so thankful because video cameras were kind of expensive, and we were young and saving money for a house.  The video camera was nice and big and recorded video on fancy new Hi8 videos!

I dutifully (and joyfully!) took family videos of our babies, toddlers, kiddos, and teens, of first steps and graduations and family vacations.  It was fantastic.

In order to be able to view these videos as a family, I dutifully (and mostly joyfully) set up a tangle of cords so that I could copy the videos onto VHS tapes, in part so that I could send copies to my in-laws and my parents, all of whom lived far away.

Once VHS tapes weren't the latest thing any more, I dutifully (it was so time-consuming!) copied the VHS tapes to DVD with a brand new DVD-VHS combination player that also recorded.

And then we moved across the country.

My stack of VHS tapes on my To Do List got put in a box.  By the time I got the DVD-VHS player/recorder set up, and all the appropriate cords plugged into the appropriate machines in my new house, life was pretty busy.  I started chipping away at my big stack of VHS tapes (I recorded a family one, and then one for each of my 3 children), and it wasn't very long before my DVD-VHS machine stopped working.

I probably don't need to tell you that you can't go buy another one any more.  That technology has been completely replaced.  And so, I am embarrassed to say, those precious home movies on VHS tapes sat on my project table for EIGHT YEARS.  Until I learned this:

I had already begun to see evidence of that in my VHS-DVD transferring, so I knew that my family videos were endangered.  They felt a little like a ticking time bomb.

My First Forever Box: VHS Tapes

It was about this time that I learned about the Forever Box, a digitizing service that is the highest-rated on TrustPilot compared to 3 (I think it was) other popular digitization websites.  

I know it can be hard to let your precious family memories out of your sight, especially when they are the ONLY COPY of them, but this is what I decided:

If I don't get these videos out of VHS form, all my kids will be able to do with them in 20 years is throw them away.  

The Forever Box is processed at a huge digitization center in Wisconsin, not sent overseas.  It is shipped with FedEx and tracked the whole time.  My VHS tapes are identified throughout the whole process using bar codes specific to me and my order.  The staff at the digitizing center wears gloves, dusts my media, and even makes it better than it was!  This is what I learned:

So, based on this, and the recommendations of other people I knew who had done it, and these TrustPilot reports, and--especially--knowing that if I didn't do something with those VHS tapes soon, it would literally be too late, I went for it.

I cannot even tell you how thrilled I was to get my family memories back.  They are accessible!  They are shareable!  We can watch them easily now!  I have been able to share videos with my grown kids, and it has been delightful!  

The Results: Not Keeping All Your Memories in one Proverbial Basket

When you place your digitization order, you can choose to get your digitized media in 3 ways:  DVD, flash drive, or in the cloud in your private Forever Storage account.  

I know the value of having multiple copies in multiple media, so I got DVDs since we have a DVD player still as well as having them saved in my Forever Storage.  The videos are downloadable from Forever Storage, so I did that as well, saving them on my computer.    

NOTE:  I am a Forever affiliate (a decision I made because I love it so much), so you will find several affiliate links in this post, from which I earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no extra cost to you.

My Second Forever Box: Family Memories on CD and in Negatives 

At least 15 (maybe even 20+) years ago, my parents, my sister, my brother, and I decided to record ourselves reading children's stories.  That way, all the kids/grandkids could hear their grandparents and aunts and uncle reading them stories that they could follow along to with their own books!  

It is a special treasure now that my mom has passed and we don't get to hear her voice any more.  

However, CD players aren't all that common any more.  Now with the youngest grandkids--and an ever-growing number of great-grandkids--these CDs aren't useful.  They've practically been lost to history, in just 15-20 years.

So, I decided to get the CD digitized (hence, the barcode on the photo above), which I know sounds silly because it's already digital.  This is called a Digital Transfer.  It's just a change from one digital form to another digital form.  But doing so (getting .mp3 versions from the CD's files) will allow these treasured stories to be played from a phone, tablet, or computer now for the newer Littles in the family!

At the same time, I decided that I want to digitize the negatives of my wedding pictures.  With the Forever Box, I could have instead chosen to have the wedding photos (the hard copies themselves) digitized by scanning, but I don't have any extra copies of them, and some of them have been displayed and faded in the sun over the last 30 years.  So I decided the negatives were the best bet.  

And I made you a video to show you how exactly to pack a Forever Box and walk you through the process.  

Since making that video, the process has been streamlined so that all media types just go in the same box.  You can see all the information for Forever Digitizing here, and keep in mind that the "price" of the "box" is really a credit.  (A $60 box includes $60 worth of media digitizing.)

The Results: Making Old Media Shareable

One of the biggest reasons to make old media shareable is this:  Even though my mom has passed on, her great-grandchildren who were born after she died can still listen to her reading them stories!  Click the image below to hear my mom reading "Go, Dog, Go!"

Click here to listen to Grandma reading you a story!

I had been trying to figure out the best way to share this newly- digitized treasure with my family.  Since my mom is gone, Mother's Day can be a sensitive time for us.  I decided that these stories would make a wonderful Mother's Day gift, so I emailed them to all the family the day before, using the link to them in my Forever Storage, similar to the one I just shared with you.  

That way, they can be accessed from a computer, tablet, or phone AND downloaded to that computer, tablet, or phone as well, which will make these stories so much more accessible to the younger generation of kiddos! 

My family (nieces, nephews, kids, dad, everyone) just clicked on the link to see where I had put the audio files (.mp3)--I put them into an Album (like a folder on your computer) in my Forever Storage.  

Of course, they're just audio files, so they don't have a thumbnail image to show which story is which.  Once you click on them, you can see the details as I have entered them.  See that on the right (below)?  

After opening the file like this, anyone I share this with can see those details at the right, and they can click on the PLAY arrow in the middle to hear the story.  (It's private in my personal account, but I did put a copy in my Demo account for you to listen to, the one I shared above, and I set that to a public setting.)

Another option for organizing your audio files--which I ended up deciding to do--is to put them in different Nested Albums (like subfolders on your computer), labeling each Nested Album as the story it contains.  It's so much easier to see what's there, and that's how I wanted to present it to my family.

You can see that I added a photo of the original Family Story Time CD to this FOREVER Album, too, so that I could set it as the Album's thumbnail image.

And because my FOREVER Storage is permanent, these stories will always be here for our family to listen to, shareable with just a link.  

And as for the negatives, you can see one of them in digital form here.  (Yes, I look 12 years old.  I was older than that, really.  I promise.)

There's No Time Like the Present

Food comes with expiration dates, and I really wish technology did, too!  

"Your computer will crash 5/16/28" or "DVD players will no longer come in laptops 6/29/23" or "There will be no way to play this Betamax tape after 3/15/16" would be SO helpful!

It falls to us, then, to stay on top of media that is important to us and our families.  

This was a TREASURE in its time because you could take home movies of your family!  For the first time EVER!  Think of it!

But if someone gave me something like this today, it would be useless.  I literally have no way to see, enjoy, or share it.  And that would be a tragedy.

If you have family memories on endangered media and need a trusted way to save them, I highly recommend the Forever Box.  You can see more details, including two short video tutorials, on the Forever Box here.

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