Tools I Used to Digitize Family Home Videos

I used several devices and software tools to capture, process, and upload my family’s home videos. It was a long project, but fun and a great learning experience.

🎞️ Analog Video (VHS, Video8)

Capturing analog tapes like VHS and Video8 was done using:

• An RCA-to-HDMI adapter
• Connected to a HDMI-to-USB-C capture adapter
• Recorded using OBS Studio into .mkv files

📼 MiniDV Tapes

For MiniDV, I installed a FireWire PCI card in an old desktop PC and used:

• WinDV to capture unaltered digital video
• DV-Datecode to extract hidden timestamps into subtitles

💡 The VideoHelp Forum was invaluable for finding these tools.

📁 Digital MTS Files

Some family videos were recorded on a Sony Handycam in the MTS format. These needed to be:

• Converted to more modern formats before uploading
• Processed with FFmpeg and deinterlacing filters

✂️ Editing and Trimming

For quick edits and cuts without re-encoding, I used:

• LosslessCut — great for fast, lossless trimming of .mkv and .mp4 files

This saved a lot of time compared to traditional video editors.

🛠️ Video Processing & Deinterlacing

Many files were interlaced (especially MiniDV and MTS). I used:

• FFmpeg + QTGMC for high-quality deinterlacing

☁️ Video Hosting

After comparing options, I chose:

• bunny.net — affordable, fast video hosting

🌐 Web Hosting

The website you’re reading was built using:

• Hugo for static site generation
• Cloudflare Pages for free and automatic deployment

Digitizing old memories was a lot of work, but absolutely worth it. Now my family can enjoy our home videos easily, from any device.