My First Vid (Master List Of First Vids)

[morgandawn]

A follow-up to this post and idea here:

Please feel free to drop a link to the first vid you made. Any fandom, any date is welcome. Even if your first vid has been online for while you can participate. Ditto if your first vid was made only days ago - or last year. Or last decade. Or whenever. All first vids in all fandoms are welcome. The idea is to show case our first efforts, remind of us where we started and encourage others who have just started vidding.

My first vid was made in 1995. It is streamed here here on iMeem .

Title: Ordinary World
Fandom: The Professionals
Artist: Duran, Duran

I made this vid using two VCRs and second or third generation copies of the TV show on videotape. Looking back it has all the hallmarks of a 'great' first time vid: cuts off (not on) the beat, long clips (although to be fair we all had limits on how fast we could cut using VCRs - but trust me, these are looong clips), talking heads etc.

The idea came to me while I was living apart from

xlorp and working on a huge project that took me to Los Angeles for a year and a half. I would drive home to my rented room in the evening and listen to this song and think of him and how much I missed him. The line 'Where is my friend when I need him most?" captured for me the dynamics of my (then) favorite pairing of Bodie and Doyle. The 'ordinary world' the singer keeps singing about is (surprise surprise) all the girlfriends they love and lost. I guess that means they were fated to be together, eh?

 

Edited in 2008: Another 'first vid' thread has been started here http://bop-radar.livejournal.com/168665.html

Comments

Re: Saving old vids

[killabeez.livejournal.com]

But I just hate the idea that vids are being lost when they could be saved.

Yes! Ditto! Yes.

Re: Saving old vids

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

Ditto times three. We have a quorum (or whatever it is called).

And trust me - there are hundreds of people who want to see old vids like my first Pros vid. Why, on iMeem alone, I have had 10 views. 10 views! And so far no one has written to tell me how I made their eyes bleed. ;-)

Re: Saving old vids

[marycrawford.livejournal.com]

Yes, fourth here. *grins* I do so hope you can preserve your vids!

As a foreigner with a PAL VCR, I didn't had access to vids until the digital age. I can't bear the idea that the older vids that comprise the history of vidding are all slowly crumbling into bits of metallic tape.

Re: Saving old vids

[klia.livejournal.com]

Miracle of miracles, I managed to digitize our first vid and put it up on IMEEM:

http://klia.imeem.com/video/bVBWmVFf/b7_dancingwithmrd/

1987 - Blakes 7 - Dancing With Mr. D, by The Rolling Stones

Eeeep! Aesthetics were very different back then!

Re: Saving old vids

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

wheeee! glad the digitizing worked.

Re: Saving old vids

[klia.livejournal.com]

I don't know which amazed me more, that I was able to record them onto DVD, or that the tapes still played. Heh.

Re: Saving old vids

[klia.livejournal.com]

Do you have any hints or tips on digitizing ancient vids? I remember thevetia and I once tried to digitize (by capturing via her Canopus ADVC-100) one of GF's old WG vids, and we just couldn't do it; certain edit points seemed to read as signal loss, or something like that. And my oldest vids are *far* worse.

Re: Saving old vids

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

I am running older vids from my last remaining working VCR into my DVD-recorder (very crude). This is what I did with GF's vids to get them onto DVD. From there you can rip/encode the footage like any other DVD.

I have to be honest - the audio on my VCR is starting to go (I need to set the VHS tapes to mono to avoid crackling). But if thevetia can bring the tape over (and assuming you're OK with the (hopefully remote) possiblity of the VCR eating the tape I can run it through the VCR/DVD recorder while she is here.

PS. On many vids - I still get signal loss or copy-guard protection and the DVD recorder will not record.

PPS. What is the name of your B7 vid?

Re: Saving old vids

[klia.livejournal.com]

I am running older vids from my last remaining working VCR into my DVD-recorder (very crude). This is what I did with GF's vids to get them onto DVD. From there you can rip/encode the footage like any other DVD.

Okay, good to know, because that's exactly what I was going to do, rather than trying to capture them directly into the computer.

You recorded each vid separately, right? Not the entire tape in one go?

But if thevetia can bring the tape over (and assuming you're OK with the (hopefully remote) possiblity of the VCR eating the tape I can run it through the VCR/DVD recorder while she is here.

Thank you, it's very sweet of you to offer. Since I have basically the same set-up here, I hope it won't be necessary to dump it on anyone else ask for help.

PS. On many vids - I still get signal loss or copy-guard protection and the DVD recorder will not record.

Gak. That's what I'm afraid of. Well, fingers crossed.

PPS. What is the name of your B7 vid?

Dancing With Mr. D, by The Rolling Stones.

Re: Saving old vids

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

When I did GF's vids we did each one separately. But we had problems with stop/starting (many many redos) so now for other vid tapes we record it in one go and make a good playlist for the DVD.

Re: Saving old vids

[klia.livejournal.com]

When we started, we didn't know we had to have some sort of signal (junk video or video black) on the tape to drop the clips onto. So... feh.

Re: Saving old vids

[killabeez.livejournal.com]

Do you have any hints or tips on digitizing ancient vids?

I have experienced the problems you're describing. The capture device seems to make a difference. I had the best luck with my old DV camera -- I recorded the vcr tape onto a DV tape, then captured that. Seemed to work with the more difficult vids with the most dropouts. I've also used my newer (still quite old, now) Digital 8 camera, with the passthrough, and it seemed to work pretty well. I've tried to record onto DVD first, but the DVD player seems to kind of freak out at the dropouts, too. I think the DV camera method was the most forgiving because it was basically analog to analog, then digitization -- but taping it to the DV gave it new timecode. Or something. I wish I knew the real technical reasons why that worked. :(

Re: Saving old vids

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

in using my DVD recorder the most problems were not the dropouts - it was sections of vids that came from movies that had clearly been copyguard protected. Even after the copyguard had been removed by the vidder. Many of the Media Cannibals multi-media vids could not be transferred via DVD recorder.

My Canopus had other issues (video and audio drop-outs).

Re: Saving old vids

[killabeez.livejournal.com]

I have a Sima that strips out the copy protect.

Re: Saving old vids

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

me too - the Sima could not handle the guard. I think the DVD Recorders are much more sensitive than the VCRs - the Sima works fine on tape to tape but failed on the VHS to DVD-R.

Re: Saving old vids

[killabeez.livejournal.com]

Ah, yeah, you're right! Maybe that is why I ended up trying the analog DV camera method instead. I can't remember what I did yesterday, never mind two years ago. I should shut up now. *g*

Re: Saving old vids

[klia.livejournal.com]

The Canopus does, too; it's not quite a hack, but there's a trick to it.

I think MD's Canopus was a lemon unit, frankly. We've used them for years, and they've always worked just fine for us.

Re: Saving old vids

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

I agree - the audio on my never worked. But it removed copyguard beautifully.

Re: Saving old vids

[klia.livejournal.com]

None of our old vids have any copyguarded footage, thank heaven; it was all VHS SP recorded off air (before the era of bugs -- ha). I wrangled them onto DVD last night (the wee hours of today, actually), and the problem I ran into was the vids that started with music over black, which didn't record, alas. So, I don't know what I'll do about that problem. But I have to try ripping and see what happens.

*hides*

*avoids*

Re: Saving old vids

[klia.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that's good to know. Alas, I don't have a DV camera, so that option is out for me.

I did manage to record them onto DVD with my DVD recorder, but I'd forgotten how many times we started with the music playing over black, which... *cough* yeah, I lost most of that, so if I want to keep them as they were originally, there's going to be a lot of nightmarish dinking around in my future. *thud*