For Family Videos, Less Is, Well Less: Welcome to the Age of Video Snippets

A few months back, I wrote a piece for Huffington Post that is apt for this holiday time of year where precious memories are made -- and worthy of being captured.  I believe it is apt to republish -- and underscore the main point -- which is, “LET THE CAMERA RUN!  Use a Camcorder -- NOT your mobile phone -- to capture your family moments!”  Here it is -- as summarized in my own blog (as well as the link to the HuffPo article).

My most recent Huffington Post guest article was posted yesterday -- titled "For Family Videos, Less Is, Well Less: Welcome to the Age of Video Snippets."  In it, I discuss the "experiential" differences between camcorder shot videos (slices of life) of yesteryear compared with today's smart phone captured videos (snippets of life).  And, I argue that -- for your personal family video memories -- you want the longer-form slices, not ADD-style snippets.

What led me to this realization?  Transferring 70 of my MiniDV tapes online -- tapes that had been languishing in a plastic bin in my garage for the past umpteen years.  A company called YesVideo -- that promises to "Bring your home movies to life" -- made that all possible.  I packed them all up.  Shipped them out.  And, 30 days later, voila!  They are now online for viewing.

Magical viewing.  Viewing of our memories.  Viewing of our slices of life.

Do you want to view your precious family memories?  YES you can!  It is a service that I recommend ... highly.  And, do it before those near-forgotten videos (MiniDVs, VHS, 8 mm, Super 8) degrade.  Priceless.

The one risk to be aware of when using any kind of cloud-based service (like YesVideo) is the possibility that the service ultimately goes out of business.  If that were to happen, what happens to all of those precious memories?  The company is not an 800 pound gorilla (yet) after all.  And, this risk isn't theoretical.  Remember the famous Flip cam and its companion cloud-based storage and streaming service?  It was massive at one point -- and then shuttered -- AFTER 800 pound gorilla Cisco had acquired it!  Flip users -- who had uploaded all of their Flip videos -- were essentially told by Cisco to fend for themselves.

So, to protect yourself from this possibility, I recommend that you order physical DVDs from YesVideo, in addition to transferring those videos online.  Then you have the back-up you need -- and the peace of mind you want.