I was tasked with converting a number of old high school-era videos into some kind of digital format, with the obvious choice being DVD. It doesn't matter what you choose, however, because the purpose is the same: preservation. Being the procrastinator that I am, I am just now getting around to it, and there are moments of course, that the goal of preservation becomes questionable.
Do you just leave these memories alone? The mind has already constructed them in detail of it choosing, suppressing the bad, enhancing the good and scrubbing the ugly. A video camera preserves, without judgement and objectively, your memories for you. Watching them can take an emotional toll.
But there are good moments; seeing a group of friends driving in a car you once loved, seeing the fashions (and how they haven't changed that much for some) and laughing at some of the ridiculous things we used to do. And of course, the bad: cringing whenever you see or hear yourself and dreading those embarrassing moments. In order to do this sort of project, you must be willing to step back and realize: what's done is done, you were who you were and you're a better person for it now. Or whatever helps you sleep at night, your call.
Right now I'm just doing the analog to digital conversion; this process is done in real time of course, and for my setup, I do not have any sound. This, I know right now, is a good thing. Later on, the video must be de-interlaced and converted to something a little more practical for casual viewing, at which point I'll probably have a little more insight into what I've witnessed.
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