Keeping Old Hi-8 and MiniDV Tapes After Digital Transfer

[Craig Young]

Ten years ago, I took two containers of old Hi-8 and MiniDV camcorder tapes to a media professional in the area to have them converted, as I was aware the tape medium would eventually deteriorate and I wanted the memories preserved. At the time it was quite expensive and took several months, but the individual created 120 DVDs and provided a Western Digital 3TB MyBook which contained the AVI files, as at the time I was utilizing an HP laptop. The quality of the DVDs is surprisingly good, and I kept the WD drive as backup but never viewed the files.

This past year I came across the two containers of the old tapes and the WD drive. Having recently purchased a new MacBook Pro, I attempted to view the files, which I learned were not compatible with the Apple platform and would require another program to access. As I researched more into file types, I learned I could use a program to convert the AVI files to MOV, so I could view them on my Mac. I purchased EaseFab software and after a lengthy conversion process, have MOV files which look great. I also kept all the original AVI files as I read, they were of slightly higher quality than MOV.

My question is should I continue to keep the original Hi-8 and MiniDV tapes, for the potential to have them re-transferred using updated technology? Given the age of the tapes, 10-30 years old, I can’t imagine the quality of transfer would be substantially improved over what I’m seeing with the current three media formats. My wife and I are making every attempt to declutter and become more organized as we move into retirement in the years ahead. Over the past several years I have made the effort to have all old film negatives and photo albums digitally transferred and continually review photo files to create folders and delete images that are of poor quality, redundant, or uninteresting. We have one daughter and we want to make things as simple and accessible for her to be able to keep and view family photos and videos in the future. My plan is to upload all to a cloud-based service once I have cleaned-up and organized each media type, just as a back-up for when an external drive potentially fails.

Any feedback is much appreciated!

[Subtitles]

I would keep all the original tapes because they are priceless.