How to digitize your old VHS home movies before the tapes give out

Somewhere in your house there's a box of VHS tapes with your kid's first steps, your wedding, or your dad doing the same bad joke at every Thanksgiving. Magnetic tape breaks down over time, and working VCRs get harder to find every year. If those memories matter, it's time to get them onto a hard drive.

Option one: the free route

Check your public library first. A lot of libraries now have "memory labs" or digitizing stations where you can bring in tapes and convert them yourself with their equipment, usually free with a library card. Some colleges and community centers offer the same. Call ahead, book a time slot and bring a thumb drive or external hard drive with plenty of space.

Option two: do it yourself at home

You need three things: a working VCR, a USB video capture device that takes the yellow, red and white RCA cables, and a computer. Free software such as OBS Studio can record the incoming video. A few tips:

• Use the best VCR you can find. A good deck with clean heads makes a bigger difference than any software setting.
• Clean the heads before you start, and don't run a tape that has visible mold or a broken leader. That can wreck the tape and the deck.
• Record in real time. There's no fast-forward trick; a two-hour tape takes two hours.
• Save in a common format like MP4 so it plays on anything, and keep the original file before you trim it.

Option three: pay someone

Local shops, photo centers and mail-in services will do it for you. It costs money, but it's the easiest route if you have a big pile. Before you mail irreplaceable tapes anywhere, ask whether they ship back your originals, what format you get, and how they handle damaged tapes. Shop around, because prices vary a lot.

Don't skip the backup

Once it's digital, keep at least two copies: one on a drive at home and one somewhere else, like a cloud account or a drive at a relative's house. A single hard drive is just a newer way to lose everything.

The Radazoid take

This is one of those jobs every guy means to do and never does, right next to cleaning out the garage. Pick a weekend, start with the tapes you'd be most upset to lose, and knock them out. Your kids will thank you, or at least laugh at your mullet, which is also a gift.

And yes, you'll find at least one tape where someone recorded over the good stuff with a random episode of a game show. Every family has one. It's tradition.