Read below for the complete article, or visit the BusinessWeek article directly at: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-16/yesvideo-moves-home-movies-from-old-formats-to-the-cloud.

Photography for the Article
For a touch of imagery, there are also some captivating photos taken by Ike Edeani who managed to capture a special delicacy of the work that happens at YesVideo on a daily basis.

His visual story can be seen in the article, as well as in his personal blog: http://blog.ikedeani.com/post/50909670974/last-week-bloomberg-businessweek-sent-me-down-to.

But for every shoot, there are a few winners that don’t quite make the cut – which still deserve to be seen. These photos were included in the “outtakes” post – http://blog.ikedeani.com/post/51001961795/outtakes-from-last-weeks-shoot-for-bloomberg.

Enterprise Tech
Bloomberg Businessweek

Technology

YesVideo Moves Home Movies From Old Formats to the Cloud

By Brad Stone on May 16, 2013

Photograph by Ike Edeani for Bloomberg Businessweek

Jennifer Brown is tearing up. She’s converting early-2000s camcorder footage into digital files, watching as a woman’s colleagues celebrate her promotion until the woman’s boyfriend appears out of nowhere, gets down on one knee, and proposes. When a group of passersby interrupts Brown quietly weeping at her computer screen, she gestures at the proposal by way of explanation. “She is totally surprised,” Brown says, “and now I’m all flustered.”

Illustration by Neasden Control Centre

Brown is a digital media specialist on the operations floor at YesVideo, one of the most curious companies in Silicon Valley. There are plenty of digital transfer services that rescue the old home movies and fraying photographs an estimated 90 million U.S. families are keeping in their closets and basements, usually converting them to DVD. Some are mail-order services; many others are local operations for people who don’t trust FedEx (FDX) with their memories.

What’s different about YesVideo is its scale and technology: In the past decade it’s become the go-to company where Wal-Mart Stores (WMT), Costco (COST), and other retailers outsource customer conversion requests. (Prices vary according to media format; for example, YesVideo will convert two hours of VHS videotape or 125 feet of movie film for $20.) Now under new management, it’s planning to go well beyond the DVD and make all video available to customers at any time via their smartphones and tablets. “We think there are 1.5 billion units of old media in the U.S. alone sitting out there,” says Michael Chang, an entrepreneur who took over the company last year in a $5 million buyout of some of its original investors.

YesVideo was founded in 1999 by Sai Wai Fu, a Shanghai-born microchip designer who’d worked at Intel (INTC) and reasoned that families besides his must also have piles of home movies gathering dust in obsolete formats. The startup made slow progress over a decade, striking deals with retailers and opening footage-processing offices in Santa Clara, Calif., and Atlanta. In its early years, YesVideo raised $20 million from a group of investors including now-bankrupt Kodak and Polaroid. The operation has been profitable, but modestly so, and in 2012 Fu sold out to Chang and his partner, Andy Choi, who’d sold mobile-ad network Greystripe the year before to online marketing company ValueClick (VCLK). They have bigger plans. “Within the next five years everyone will have connected televisions, and our belief is that personal movies have to be the killer application,” Chang says. He wants YesVideo to become a kind of premium YouTube—a one-stop service for storing and sharing favorite videos.

In the past year, YesVideo’s new managers have rebuilt the company with an eye toward cloud services and exploiting the latest in online sharing technology. One of the first moves by Choi, who is now chief technology officer, was to use his personal credit card to open an account with Amazon.com’s (AMZN) cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services. Customer video now resides on Amazon’s servers, and its content delivery network streams YesVideo to customers. It also says it will soon start using its Elastic Transcoder service to convert video to formats that are playable on any smartphone, tablet, or PC. “I imagine we are a midsize account at best,” Chang says, “but we’re growing quickly and Amazon has been giving us a lot of attention recently.”

Surrounded by chip companies and Web startups, YesVideo’s 25,000-square-foot Santa Clara production facility sticks out. It hums with the staccato rhythms of old movie projectors and slide carousels. There’s dedicated floor space for VHS, Betamax, 16mm, and Super 8 film, and even standard 8mm film, a format invented in the 1930s. One room is devoted to photo albums, with each page digitized using a high-resolution camera. In another, used to convert slides, YesVideo engineers have cut holes in the sides of a half-dozen vintage Kodak Carousel projectors and inserted Nikon (7731) D10 digital cameras to directly capture each slide. The company buys many of its retro players and replacement parts on EBay (EBAY). “You won’t be able to recreate this business in about three years” because there won’t be enough working equipment, says YesVideo engineer Rolf Breuer.

Photograph by Ike Edeani for Bloomberg Businessweek

Overhead video cameras monitor YesVideo’s operations floor, and batches of customer media are stored in gray trash cans, which are secured with locks and labeled in large letters: “Caution: Customer’s memories inside.” The company’s 300 employees are supposed to review each video to ensure a high-quality transfer and to prevent infractions of the user agreement, such as its ban on home pornography. Like the weeping Brown, employees sometimes find themselves drawn in further during the conversion process, when the videos play out in real time on their computer screens. They say they see many birthdays and weddings and a lot of bad dancing, but some clips stand out. One employee recalls seeing an old 8mm black-and-white film of a safari that encountered a lion on the savanna. The movie ended abruptly, with the lion charging the group and the camera falling to the ground.

Over the next two years, Chang wants to expand YesVideo’s nascent operations in Japan and Britain. In February the company introduced an app that lets customers view their converted media on the iPhone, and it plans to release a similar app for the iPad this summer. Chang says YesVideo is developing premium services such as video editing software and a facial-recognition tool—to allow customers to quickly identify all their videos in which specific persons make an appearance. Another service coming this summer, called Snapshot, will let users print a photograph from individual frames.

“We think that once we’re able to access more of those 90 million households with old media in their closets, we can pivot the business from storage and add value on top of the video,” says Chang, who imagines charging $10 a month for the service and sharing that revenue with retailers. “Not to get too cheesy about it, but I think everybody here has the thought that what we are doing is pretty special. We are unlocking people’s memories.”

The bottom line: The go-to digital conversion company for major U.S. retailers wants to become a premium YouTube for users’ favorite videos.

This footage is from 8mm film shot in 1949. Some traditions are just perfect the way they are! How are you celebrating your Memorial Day weekend this year?

Completed orders are stacked ceiling-high today. Their last stop at YesVideo, as they wait for their dedicated UPS truck to arrive for their trip back to their rightful owners.

This week we are featuring a photo from Erika Price Designs.

After a day of fun to get to know one another, and a first-time-ever “Easter Egg Hunt YesVideo Tour”, the Ambassadors got to learn YesVideo from the ground-up. Before their farewell, we sat down for a little unscripted Q&A to reflect on their visit.

Thanks for the great memories, Bloggers!

 
Denise has transferred several videotapes with YesVideo, and she shares this video with us. A clip from the day she was united with her husband, Harold. Congratulations Denise & Harold!
 

What’s your most memorable wedding moment?

The YesVideo Norcross team of over 30-strong runners after completing their race at Susan G. Komen Cure for the Greater Atlanta this past weekend. Proudly uniting to raise awareness and fundraising the fight against breast cancer.

This week we are featuring a photo from Amy at The Breezy Mama.

Since the memories of my life there are almost twenty years old, they’ve become somewhat diluted over time. I notice that when I remember what my old apartment looked like, it’s from the perspective of someone barely over three feet tall. I remember bits & pieces in flashes, and while I have a few photos from my childhood that help piece things together, there is still so much more that remained fuzzy.

I recently had a home video transferred to DVD using YesVideo. I let my Dad pick out a tape since he knows what they all are & I haven’t seen any of them in years- and some I’ve never seen at all. My Dad happened to pick the tape that included many of our highlights from the last year I lived in Chicago, when I was just 5 and 6, and it was just amazing to see.

The tape {now DVD} included some fun memories like meeting Sandra Bullock while she filmed “While You Were Sleeping” around the corner from my house {that’s her in the picture above, with my Dad & I}, and our final trip to Disney World. It also caught some adorable {if I do say so myself} clips of me as a little girl. In one clip I was dressed in my Halloween costume, singing the songs that I had learned in Kindergarten that day. In another, I’m discovering my Easter Basket and hunting for eggs throughout my house. There’s even a clip of my best friend from Kindergarten, who I still talk to today, dressed up as Dorothy {I was Ozma} playing hide & seek with my action figures, which my Mom hid for us.

The clips that meant the most though were the ones that anyone else would find remarkably boring. When I lived in Chicago, I lived in a two-flat: one house with two apartments. My Great Aunt lived downstairs, and we lived upstairs. When we moved to Vegas, she actually moved a few weeks before I did. When she did, she moved with my Grandma {her sister}, and I was heartbroken. I knew I’d see them in just a few weeks, but to a five-year-old three weeks may as well be ten years.

On the day that they moved, my Dad took the camera and did a video tour of her {now empty} apartment. I was able to see every inch of the place from an adult’s perspective- and while the couch with the bright orange & green afghan was noticeably absent, the memories of years spent in that apartment came flooding back. When the tour was over, I saw myself as a little girl, saying goodbye to my Aunt & Grandma.

My Grandma has since passed away, and watching the heartbreak in my eyes as I said goodbye rehashed some of the pain of her passing. However, it was worth it to see her again. To hear her voice as she said she would see me soon, and not to cry, was breathtaking. It’s been almost five years since she passed, and I still miss her everyday. But now when I find myself thinking about her, I know I can still see her on our home movies.

While the home movie I had transferred wouldn’t interest anyone else, it means the world to me. It brought up old memories I had forgotten about, it allowed me to remember my Grandma {and my childhood pets even}, and even to see a bit of my son in myself at that age. I just can’t wait to see what the next video has!

What forgotten memories have you uncovered with your YesVideo transfers?

This post was written by Shell Feis, blogger at {Not Quite} Susie Homemaker. Shell lives in Las Vegas & blogs about her transition from sorority girl to mom & wife. You can follow her #YesMemory #PhotoADay progress on Instagram & Twitter or find her on Pinterest!

He shares a priceless 8mm movie film clip from the celebration of his Grandparents’ Golden Wedding Anniversary, filmed in 1968. 50 years married, and full of laughs and smiles!

Have a clip to share? Write to us at yvsocial@yesvideo.com to be part of our YesVideo Customer Feature segment!

Priceless family dinners would not be the same without Mom. Thanks for all your love & care, Mom! Happy Mother’s Day!

Vintage 60′s 8mm film footage YesVideo archives.

Photos Submitted By:

Candice from Fashionably Organized

Kadi from Our Seven Seeds

Dwan from MommaDJane

Robin from Simple Green Organic Happy

Elizabeth from Edvacation

Sandra from West Philly Mama