KEEPING MEMORIES FRESH

[BEAST]

I started interviewing vets in the 1980's, mostly oral interviews saved on casette. As some of these recordings are now over 20 years old, I was concerned about the tapes becoming no longer playable. This winter, I began to transfer those recordings onto my computer using "IMAGEMAKER", a no frills program that came with my video camera.

 

What are you doing with your interviews? Are you saving them onto a CD or DVD? Have you transcribed the information? What programs are you using? I need to get better software to eliminate the posps and background noises, any recommendations?

[Jeeper704]

99% of the recollections I have are in letters I received from Veterans.

I only have a couple of tapes; one of a US Ranger and a couple from a British Veteran of the Malayan Campaign (1947).

 

It is a good thing to write down the interviews just in case the tape or DVD gets damaged.

Then at least you have the text.

 

Erwin.

[ccmax]

I still use recording tapes. I have been doing so since the 1980's. Digital photography has allowed me to record letters and diaries much easier.

[rrobertscv]

We honored all out WWII vets with a banquet 2 years ago. We wpent the 2 years prior to that interviewing and videoing all 53 vets in our county. By the time we got to the banquet 4 of these had died.

[ccmax]

Last year I was going to interview a sergeant from a medical battalion. He couldn't see me the week I phoned him and asked me to call him again next month. I took a couple of months more to call and he died. He had never been interviewed, nor did he write a journal. His memories were totally lost to history.

[ww2vault]

Hi,

 

I am planning on videoing some of the veterans in my area, and I am going to try and use a web cam and see how it turns out. The image quality of a web cam is not as great as a DVD video recorder but one big plus of using a web cam is that the video is saved straight to my laptops hard drive without the use of DVD's. Also, both my laptop and desktops hard drives are being ghosted, so in case one fails I will have a complete back up of it on another hard drive.

 

Over on the WW2F I found a great thread that pertains to interviewing veterans, as well as a long list of questions you can ask a veteran. Veteran Interview Question Guide

 

- Jeff

[Bob Hudson]

Hi,

 

I am planning on videoing some of the veterans in my area, and I am going to try and use a web cam and see how it turns out. The image quality of a web cam is not as great as a DVD video recorder but one big plus of using a web cam is that the video is saved straight to my laptops hard drive without the use of DVD's. Also, both my laptop and desktops hard drives are being ghosted, so in case one fails I will have a complete back up of it on another hard drive.

 

Over on the WW2F I found a great thread that pertains to interviewing veterans, as well as a long list of questions you can ask a veteran. Veteran Interview Question Guide

 

- Jeff

 

I used to consult on, write about and shoot video professionally but now I no longer want to deal with big camcorders and tiny tapes. I now own two Sanyo Xacti camcorders (the newest one is HD) which records on to SD memory cards (about 45 minutes of video per gigabyte of memory card). You can save the MPEG-4 movies to any computer hard drive or burn them a DVD as data files or, or course, you can edit them into a standard video which you save on tape or as DVD movies playable on any DVD player.

 

Archiving video is a bear because most media do have limited life spans (and we don't yet know how long for many modern types) but DVD's seem to have a good chance of outlasting video or audio tape, which is a fragile thing really.

 

Besides the durability of the media you also have to consider the format of the video. For instance these days you don't want to put anything on VHS tape that you would hope to watch 10 years from now - it's already very hard to find decent working VHS players and in 10 or 20 years they will be very scarce.

 

Save all of your original recording media but do transfer it to other media as a backup, at least: if you have analog audio, VHS and Hi 8 tapes you'll want to get them digitized. There are some very inexpensive boxes you can plug into computers to capture audio and video to the hard drive. Some camcorders can do that directly via USB and Firewire connections. Quicktime is a good universal format for digital files: it actually has many flavors for various types of audio and video, but it is an accepted standard for digital audio and video and those files should easily be playable on computers 20 years from now.

[ww2vault]

I have a question that is along the sames lines as Beast's, the video camera I use has pops and static noise when I play back the video. Does anyone have any recommendations as to what software I can use to take them out or reduce them some what?

 

- Jeff

[316th FS 324th FG]

My older two kids (age 10 and 12) are regularly involved in interviewing veterans as part of an ongoing oral history project we are involved in. They have interviewd folks from WWII to OIF, from tech sergeant to colonel. Planned subjects for this summer include a 10th Mtn vet, a CBI sergeant and Vietnam war nurse on Okinawa.

 

We use an inexpensive digital voice recorder that we bought at Walmart and that has a good built-in mic. The audio play back has been excellent.

 

We also transcribe all the interviews and provide a copy to the vet. We use a Nikon D-40 to take pictures of letters, photos, uniforms etc. If they let us, we will take the photo albums and letters and scan them at 600dpi.

 

Finally, we use the LOC Veterans Oral History project serve as the baseline questions, but we work together to modify them before the interview so they are more specific to a given subject. I also encourage the kids to follow some of the interesting answers to completion. One of the challenges is to keep them focused on the veteran's answer, and see where it leads, rather than just on the next question they want to ask.

 

D

[JDK]

I was also going to recommend a digital voice recorder. They are the best thing to use. Downloadable

to your PC, and then you can burn them to CD's. I plan on interviewing a few AAF vets this fall. A 15th

AAF B-17 Tail Gunner is bringing me to meet all his AAF buddies. I've never met this group of guys, so

I thought I would get as many interviews as possible.

You can pick up a Digital Voice Recorder for a very good price now. Best Buy has a great variety of

quality and prices. That's where I picked mine up.

J.D.

[Teamski]

I have yet to meet a living vet whose memorabilia I have. Gertrude Moller's WAC group was the closest. Her friend approached me on Saturday, and Gertrude passed away the following Thursday, the day I was supposed to meet her. Sad, really.

 

I do as much research as I possibly can, and write up a biography of the individual. I display these bios with the medal groups and uniforms of the individuals. I have been fortunate to talk with family members of some individuals and was able to record a lot of really good personal information that helps paint the picture of their lives. It gets a really good response at the collector shows. It's all about preserving the memory of the person.....

 

-Ski

[Troy13]

My step-father was the only vet I "interviewed". After reading both of Andrew J. Carroll's books concerning war letters, it just hit me about history being lost when vets pass away. (I don't know how the two fit together, but they did in my mind.) So I called my mom and asked her to ask Ernie to write down as much as he could remember about what he did, where he was, what he saw, etc. I received back two pages of written gold in my eyes. I am so glad that I did that and that he shared his story with me, because he passed away 4/18/07. I now have a part of history that will never be forgotten.

 

Also, I have my living vet, my father. Along with the newspaper article I have, he has located his diary he kept while he was in basic through Korea. Can't wait to go over it with him.

 

I want to thank those members and their families who do this and keep history alive.

 

Troy