For years, I’ve been wanting to remaster and archive our older shows on 3/4” U-matic tape. To accomplish this takes three things, tapes, conversion equipment with adjustment capability, and will. Over time, I’ve collected the tapes from the station, Andrew, and my attic. I have a couple of seasons sitting under my desk, waiting.

Basic conversion equipment has been around for a while. I’ve done some rough conversions of the early seasons, but the quality is all over the place. Some of the old tapes were played a LOT. Every play degrades the tape a little more. I wanted to be able to color correct and adjust levels as necessary. Final Cut Pro allows that, but I needed the hardware to play and convert the tapes. Keith has been wonderful in that regard. With patience, persistence, and his computer connections, he found everything we needed at reasonable prices. Now I have an impressive media conversion tower.

Impetus came with my dear friend Shiaw-Ling. Like many things, I’ve been putting the conversion off for other activities. She has some VHS tapes from her aunt in China that she’d like to convert. In exchange, she’s indexing and grading my comic book collection, so I can sell them. That’s intense labor and data entry, but she’d been doing it professionally for several years. I couldn’t pass that up. We’re still working on her videos, but in between, I reconfigure for the U-matic to capture and process.

I’ll write on the front page when they become available, but won’t publish the full article, just link to its page. Stay tuned.