If you grew up in Fylde, chances are there’s a stack of old VHS tapes gathering dust in a cupboard. Those tapes hold birthday parties, school nativities, summer holidays at the coast, and family gatherings that no one thought to film on a phone. But VHS degrades over time, and the players that can read them are becoming harder to find. So how do you save those memories before they’re lost for good?
Your Options for Digitising VHS
You have two main routes. The first is to use a local transfer service. In Fylde, there are small businesses and online services that will take your tapes, convert them to digital files, and return them on a USB drive or hard drive. This is usually charged per VHS tape and depends on the provider. Check the provider checker on this page to compare prices and turnaround times near you.
The second route is to do it yourself. A DIY USB capture card is inexpensive, easily bought from eBay or Amazon for around £20, and with a little patience you can transfer your tapes at home. Here’s our step-by-step DIY guide:
- Get the gear. You’ll need a VHS player (or a combo VHS/DVD recorder), a USB capture card, and the right cables (usually RCA or S-Video). Most capture cards come with a short instruction manual.
- Connect everything. Plug the VHS player into the capture card, then plug the capture card into your computer’s USB port. Open the recording software that came with the card (or download free software like OBS Studio).
- Set up the recording. Choose the correct input source in the software. Press play on the VHS player, then hit record on the software. Let it run for the full length of the tape.
- Save your files. Once finished, stop the recording and save the file as an MP4 or other common format. Label it with the date and event so you can find it later.
Be warned: real-time transfer means a two-hour tape takes two hours of your time. If you have many tapes, a service might save you weekends of work.
The Problem with Digital Files Alone
Once your tapes are digitised, you’ll have a folder of video files on your computer. But that’s where many people stop. Those files sit on a hard drive, forgotten, just like the tapes in the loft. You watch them once, maybe twice, then they become digital clutter.
What if those videos could come alive? What if they could be shared with the cousins in Manchester, the grandparents in Scotland, and the aunt who lives abroad, all in one place where everyone can add their own old photos and videos?
Start Your Family Archive Tonight
This is where Memrial comes in. Memrial is a private family memory archive, like a private, ad-free Facebook just for your family. You don’t need to wait until your VHS tapes are digitised. You can start tonight, from your sofa, for free, by uploading the photos and videos already on your phone. Pin dates to build a shared family timeline. The digitised tapes can join later.
Imagine this: you upload a clip from your childhood birthday party. Your mum adds photos from the same day that she’d kept in a shoebox. Your brother adds the video he shot on his camcorder. Suddenly, one event is told from everyone’s perspective. Memrial brings all those memories together.
And when family members are far apart, you can watch old home videos together in synced Watch Parties, everyone in different homes, laughing at the same moment, reacting in real time. You can even bring faded or black-and-white footage back to life with Colourisation, and tag the people in every memory so the whole family history lives in one private place.
As the person who starts it, you are the archive owner with full control. You decide who can see what, and you can invite relatives to add their own photos and videos. It’s free to start, and your memories are permanently preserved, originals never compressed or deleted.
Don’t Wait, Start Now
You don’t need a complete collection of digitised tapes to begin. Start with what you have on your phone tonight. Pin a date to that holiday video from 2019. Add a scan of your grandmother’s wedding photo. The rest, the VHS tapes, the old camcorder tapes, can be added as you digitise them. The important thing is to start building your family’s timeline, one memory at a time.
So go ahead. Dig out that phone, upload a memory, and invite your family to join. Your archive is waiting.