How-To Video Library

We provide you with a suite of secure online tools to create your personal history or family history. We give you 100 megabytes of FREE SECURE STORAGE and your own personal workspace. You can easily upgrade this storage allocation for as little as $4.00 per month. We can also help you create your biography book, video, or website through our optional LifeHistory Angel Services. Everything you upload instantly appears in your own timeline of your life. Leave your legacy. We make it fast & easy!

Nobody can tell your story like you can. If you don't tell your story, who will? Simply upload your photos, stories, videos and audios and it all instantly appears in your timeline. You can upload anything and add unlimited commentary, a headline, and the date where you want each item to appear and it appears there like magic! It's a perfect tool for daily journaling and documenting your life or family story!

You get 100 megabytes of FREE STORAGE in our secure cloud to upload all your photos, stories, documents, videos, audio recordings or anything else you want to include in your life history. You can expand your storage sucscription to any amount beyond your free storage for a nominal monthly fee. You can even link to your YouTube videos, Vimeo videos or other web pages to be included in your timeline.

Creating your personal history book will be a memorable gift to your family and your descendants for generations to come. Your autobiography can contain the unique life lessons that you have learned as well as the experiences that are meaningful to you that you want to share with your family. Your personal history book will become your treasured legacy of love.

We can provide you with do-it-yourself tools, which you can use to pull your life story together including our helpful personal history questionnaire, or you can take advantage of our helpful hourly Angel services, including personal interviews by trained professional historians who can also help you with our transcription and scanning services. We can come to your home to interview you and gather photographs or we can coordinate with you through our video conferencing service. We can help you every step of the way and we can do as much or as little as you want. For us, helping you create your autobiography is a labor of love!

We live in a time when it's easy to record our life experiences in high-resolution 4K video that will last forever. Most of us have little or no idea what kind of people our great grandparents were. It doesn't need to be that way for our descendants. Through video, we can live on. Our descendants can see us and hear us. They can know us as their loving ancestors.

You can supply us with raw video or we can come to your home and professionally record some of your favorite stories and life lessons that you want to pass on. We can also include segments of video or photographs from your life to create an autobiographical video that will allow your descendants to grasp the significance of your life. We will coordinate every detail of your video with you to ensure that it includes everything you want, including video interviews, other video segments that you provide, photographs, and even your favorite music. We will professionally edit your video and after you approve it we will provide it to you on a DVD and even post it privately online to make it easy for your family to access it wherever they are.

After you complete your autobiography, we can create a personal or family website for you to provide a permanent online repository for your story. Your website can contain your entire autobiography, as well as videos, audio segments, photos and links to other resources. You can choose to subscribe to this website hosting service for any length of time that you desire, by the year, or by the decade. We can host, even after you are gone! Having your own website makes it easy to make your story available to everyone online. If you prefer, we can host your site privately, which would require a password to access it. You can include your life history, videos of yourself and your family, photographs of your life experiences, sound recordings, interviews and stories on your personal or family website.

Get started in 8 simple steps:

1. GATHER

Begin by gathering the photos, videos, audios and stories of your life.

2. DIGITIZE

DIGITIZE all your content; scan your photos, convert your analog videos and audio recordings to digital files and transcribe your audio interviews and recordings.

3. NAME

NAME all your digital content according to standardized date-oriented format: YEAR-MONTH-DAY-PERSON-PLACE/ACTIVITY. By dating all your digital content as you save it on your personal computer it will automatically appear in chronological order.

4. UPLOAD & LABEL

UPLOAD all your content to LifeHistoryApp.com. As you upload your items, give each item a TITLE and a TIMELINE DATE. This will automatically place your content in the proper order in the timeline of your life.

5. ADD EXTERNAL LINKS

You can insert external links to your life story in the ADD CONTENT section of your private workspace. You can also add hyperlinks to YouTube or Vimeo videos or other related websites.

6. RECORD

You can record your own videos or audio clips by clicking on these menu options.

7. ADD MEMORIES

Use the MEMORIES section to remind you of times in your life that you want to comment on and include photos, videos and audio files to enrich the story of your life.

8. REVIEW & EDIT

Review your life history content in the FILE EXPLORER and TIMELINES (both horizontal and vertical) to verify that everything is as you want it to be.

UPLOAD all your photos, videos, stories, and audios to LifeHistoryApp.com using the ADD CONTENT option. As you upload your items, give each item a TITLE and a TIMELINE DATE. This will automatically place your content in the proper order in the timeline of your life.

You can click on the CHOOSE button to display the files on your local computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone. On a Mac this will present Finder. On Windows this will present Windows Explorer. On your tablet or smartphone this will typically display the PHOTOS folder.

Alternatively, you can use drag-and-drop from another screen to copy a file from your local device to the CHOOSE FILE button, which will queue it to upload when you click on the SAVE button.

After you have identified the file that you want to upload, you can give it a TITLE. Think of this as a chapter or paragraph heading for this element of your story. Enter the corresponding date in the DATE field and then enter your story in the COMMENTS area, either by typing it or using cut & paste to copy your story or commentary from another document.

Writing Your Story with ELLA AI: ELLA AI is your personal writing assistant that makes capturing your memories effortless. Instead of struggling with a blank page, simply click the microphone button and start talking—ELLA instantly transcribes your words as you speak, turning your voice into beautifully formatted text in real-time. Can't find the right words? ELLA can help! Just tell ELLA what you want to write about, and she'll craft engaging stories based on your memories. You can also type or paste text from another document if you prefer. Whether you're speaking naturally about your memories, typing your thoughts, or asking ELLA to help you write, your story gets captured quickly and professionally. ELLA makes it easy for everyone—whether you're comfortable with technology or prefer just talking about your memories. Clicking the SAVE button will save your content and all associated information to the LifeHistoryApp system in your personal secure workspace.

There are two ways to add video to your history:

Method 1: Upload Videos Directly

Upload your MP4 videos directly into LifeHistoryApp by using the CHOOSE button. Note that the only type of video that is playable in the LifeHistoryApp application is .MP4. If you upload any other type of video file, it will upload into the system but your video will not appear in your timeline and you will need to download the video to view it.

We recommend that you convert your videos to MP4 format before you upload them. This is a very efficient compression format and will display properly in your timelines. Handbrake is a great free video converter. Wondershare is another free converter that you can download for both Mac and Windows.

Method 2: Link to YouTube or Vimeo

Click on "Do you want to specify an external link" which will enable you to provide a link to either a YouTube or Vimeo video.

For YouTube: Click on the SHARE button below and to the right of the video. Simply COPY the link provided and PASTE it into the field provided in LifeHistoryApp.

For Vimeo: Click on the SHARE LINK in the upper right corner of the screen. COPY the link presented and PASTE it into the SPECIFY EXTERNAL LINK field provided in LifeHistoryApp.

After entering the video link, remember to add a TITLE, DATE, and COMMENTS or NOTES for the video. Then click the SAVE button.

Getting Organized

Step 1: Gather Everything
The first step in scanning your printed, physical photos is to get them all together in one place. This may seem overwhelming, but trust me—you will be glad you didn't forget this step. This will help you eliminate duplicates and let you know the scope of your scanning project.

Step 2: Sort by Person or Theme
Sort your photos by person or by theme. At this point, don't worry about organizing them by date.

Step 3: Organize into Three Categories

• Your Favorites: Think of these as the images that you would be most interested in seeing or sharing if it were to appear in a magazine ten years from now. Include certificates, report cards, favorite objects, newspaper articles—these historical documents will add interest to your story.
• Your Discard Pile: Place all duplicates, blurry, out of focus, or images of things that simply don't matter to you or anyone else.
• Undecided: This pile may deserve a second look in the future or come in handy if you want to add interest or variety to your story later on.

Dating Your Photos

As you put a photo into your favorites pile, lightly jot down the DATE TAKEN on the back of each image in pencil. Use this format: YEAR-MONTH-DAY, like "2021-03-20". Make sure to add zeros to single digit numbers (02, 03, 04 instead of 2, 3 or 4).

When you scan and name the scanned images you can begin your file names with this date. This will cause your computer to automatically sort them by YEAR-MONTH-DATE order when you save them on your computer.

Scanning Settings

For Photos:

• File Type: JPG
• Resolution: 300 dpi (dots per inch)
• Compression: Low

For Documents and Certificates:

• Resolution: 200 dpi

Important Tips

Create a (USED) Folder: Create a folder called "(USED)" inside each person's folder. Move all images here as you upload them to LifeHistoryApp. This leaves only the un-uploaded files in your main folder, so you'll know when everything has been uploaded.

Ideal Image Dimensions: The optimal image width for display and printing is between 900 and 1,000 pixels wide. All images will be displayed proportionately, regardless of their native width or height.