The worst case of format-gone-obsolete has to be my Fisher-Price PXL-2000. I was fortunate the camera still worked otherwise my movies were doomed. What’s worse: video that you allowed to degrade, or video stuck in a proprietary format? My VHS tapes were quickly falling into both categories. If you’ve got tapes at home then buy a cheap VHS-to-DVD recorder ($50) and start converting. You’ll be glad you did.

One of those VHS tapes was my high school graduation ceremony from 1997. The conversion to DVD wasn’t a disaster but it had problems: wobbly sound, washed out colors, and bands of video distortion. Rather than leave the DVD sitting around, I instead copied it to my PC. I then cropped out the distorted areas and compressed the file down to 282MB (320×224 pixels). The result is pretty good considering the source. The video won’t degrade over time and it’s much easier to share.

Download the graduation video and relive 110 minutes of absolute monotony punctuated by three seconds of mortarboard tossing fun. You’ll need the Xvid video codec to watch. It’s open source and free to download at xvid.org.

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