Moving Images & Sound - DuSable Museum of African American History

Bring your favorite home movie memories to have them digitized with Smithsonian staff members. Film Scanning and Video Digitization will convert your favorite memories on obsolete, analog formats into digital files for easy playback and sharing.

• You may show up anytime during the time period when you registered, either 10:30am - 12:15pm or 1:30pm - 3:15pm. Drop-offs will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.

• It is expected that each drop-off will last from 15 to 30min.

• To help maximize the number of items we can digitize during your capture time, organizing your items ahead of time will help increase the number of items that we can digitize! Organize them by priority of what you would like digitized. Videotape and audiotape digitization are real time processes! This means that 1 hour of content on your tape will take 1 hour to digitize. There is no way to speed it up! So, if possible, it is best to decide ahead of time what tapes you most want digitized. If need be, we can preview tapes for content at the start of your session, but this will limit the amount of time we will have for digitization. You can also prioritize your home movie films and we will help you with this by inspecting your reels in order to assess their condition.

• When you arrive for your scheduled pickup-time one week later, we will return your original materials and give you a thumb drive with your digitized home movies!

• IMPORTANTLY, this digitization session will only be to digitize moving image formats – Super 8mm, Regular 8mm, and 16mm; sound formats-1/4 reel to reel audiotape and cassettes tapes; and video tape formats - VHS, Betamax, Betacam, MiniDV, and Hi8. We will not be able to digitize photographic prints, post cards, calling cards, or commercially produced movies and videos.