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Tech question - or am I just looking for a make work project.

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JPSmit

JPSmit

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To start. At this moment in my house there is no technology that would allow me to play a CD. (technically there is an old laptop - more on that later.) Likewise, there is nothing that allows me to play a DVD (yes I have a bluray player but I don't even know where it is)

I have a Smart TV with the Tunein app.

I also have access to pretty much every movie ever made on the interweb as well as Netflix/ Apple TV/ Disney+

In the cupboard in my Office I have about 25 Christmas CDs
Somewhere in the basement is another box of CDs as well as 2 boxes of DVDs

At one point I ripped all the Cds into itunes (and onto an NAS drive) - and likewise one box of DVDs onto the same NAS drive. Which promptly died.

I don't think I had listened to any of the songs.

I think I am just an idiot for wanting to do it again.

any thoughts? (and if I did, any easy way? - I would need to use the old laptop.

(I was thinking with the CDs putting them on a thumb drive to play in the car or ???)

discuss.
 
Ad idiot? Maybe but I wouldn't be a good judge of that. A few years ago, I got started ripping a bunch of old vinyl to the computer using Audacity. Getting set up was a real chore as my office has no means nor room for the equipment to play them. I squeezed it in anyway. Audacity is a fine tool but it is still extremely time consuming cleaning up the pops and other noise from old vinyl. I got through a half dozen platters before having to "postpone for later."
 
John Turney said:
At least you have CDs and DVDs. I had to have a friend convert VHS tapes to DVDs for me.
Click to expand...
Hundreds of hours of "stuff" on Betamax cassettes here. No way would I be able to afford to transfer it all. Everything from birthday celebrations to water skiing sessions.

We'll just have to rely on memory. :unsure:
 
There is no easy/practical way to automate the transfer of analog to digital. I do quite a bit of vinyl transcription and it is a time consuming process to get it right. Audacity has some nice tools for it, but there really is no easy way for any software to tell the difference between an unwanted pop/click and (for example) 2 drumsticks slapped together or a sound effect. But its hard to find things on CD sometimes (or its been re-edited to cut out something they thought was "dated") so there are good cases for doing a vinyl transcription.
 
Somehow at Christmas the videos of our daughters came up and they wanted to watch some of them. I had edited some onto DVD over the years. Some played some did not play very well. So our oldest daughter said we should transfer all the videos to the Cloud. Saying there are companies that will do the conversion for you. Unfortunately the video tapes span 8mm Digital 8 and Mini DV. There are a lot of them. Often there is mixed content, school band concert and then Christmas party so they would have to be gone through in real time.
I sent her this photo of some of the tapes. Got the answer back. That is Totally doable.
The photo is only some of the tapes. The Mini DV tapes are on shelves.

David

Video tapes s.jpg
 
I think that my current situation is to box up all my CDs DVDs and to put them in the basement. I am not quite ready to part with them (though won't likely keep them all) - I know I should be purging (and will) but this is an intermediate step.

I have about 5 VCR tapes that I do have the conversion stuff for - but might just farm out as I don't have a VCR player to hook the cables to.

thanks for helping me clarify my thoughts.
 
I ripped all of my CDs a few years ago. They are saved on an external HD, my computer, and an SD card in my phone. I've also converted a lot of my cassettes and 8 tracks that were in decent condition. Every once in awhile when I have nothing better to do I'll spend some time with my vinyl collection transfering it over to digital, but it's very time consuming.
 
I definately am keeping my CDs, DVDs and BluRays - even though I have put many onto a digital format for convenience I don't want to lose the originals because hard drives fail, SSDs and flash drives can also fail. I don't want my convenience copies to be the only copies.
 
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