The Best Way to Preserve Priceless Memories

Remember the video you took of your child's kindergarten graduation years ago, and the amazing video of your younger brother's bachelor party? Your old tapes, like old photographs, can deteriorate and all those priceless memories will be lost. Rhys Ludlow, owner of Ludlow Media Services, a Diamond Certified company, tells me that videotapes can last anywhere from 10 to 30 years, depending on how they're stored and how often they're played. Deteriorating tapes don't playback well. Images become jumpy and snowy. The magnetic particles on the tapes become unglued and clog the heads of your tape player.

To avoid losing your family's video collection, you may want to consider transferring your videos to DVD. DVDs have a 100+ year life expectancy and can be played thousands of times. On a DVD, you can mark where particular pictures/events are and make copies inexpensively. They're also easy to store and mail.