Ask Dr LJ

[drwex]

Because you are wise Masters, Mistresses and Meistrons of All Things, I request hints and pointers on the following:

- where can I get one 'slogan button' made and delivered, cheaply? Nancy the button lady would charge me $5.50 delivered, which is a bit steep and I don't want to wait until next Arisia to get this.

- where can I get a bunch of old videotapes digitized, also reasonably cheaply? The welter of oddball services returned by a Google search just confused me further. (These are technical, not personal or "personal" so any sort of commercial service should be able to handle the material.)

Comments

[skreeky]

1. Ask Erica nicely.

2. If you have a computer with a firewire input and a DVD burner, I can lend you the necessary converter box to make your VCR outputs talk to it. The Sonic software that pretty much comes with Windoze does a fine job, and I hear Mac has the same sort of thing in its iLife bunch. I can't really help you with Linux.

[coraline]

that only works if he wants a little one -- i don't think (though i could be mistaken) that she has a large button press...

[drwex]

I think you're right about the size issue.

[drwex]

Hrm. The only computer that I can think of in our house that has Firewire even vaguely possible would be the Mac laptop and I'm not so sure about that. I'm also unsure about its DVD burning capabilities. I think it's a DVD-R only drive.

[heinleinfan.livejournal.com]

No help...but if you find a good digitizing service, let me know, because I've been wanting to turn some home movies into DVDs for the family for Christmas presents...

[lindalee.livejournal.com]

jcgbigler, daurdabla and I co-own a buttonmaker. It is currently in jcgbigler's possession. If you coordinate with him, I'm sure he'd arrange to make a button for you.

[drwex]

OK, I'm guessing his traditional three-initials@mit address still works?

[finagler.livejournal.com]

Back in the pre-digital days you could ask at most any Indian restaurant and find someone who could convert video tapes to other formats (notably PAL <--> VHS). You might just ask next time you're in one and see if they've made the jump to digital.

[ariesd.livejournal.com]

The tape to Digital worked fine with descent quality. I can make DVD's or WMV or QT or set them up for a streaming web server, Maybe you can come up for an evening an we will go through them. And now that the vcr is setup again I will setup the Record player and finish Pygment's LP's. Sorry so long on that, my bad.

[drwex]

Woot! Thanks muchly. I'll dig through the tapes this weekend and figure out which one(s) are worth digitizing.