Why this webpage?

Programming

In the late 90ies I started playing around with HTML and webpages. It became a hobby, which I never really lost the interest of, but at the same time also never really had time to keep up with, due to my study and job as a school-teacher.

The Video-Collection for Learning

I am convinced that showing a documentary in a class as an appetizer, will increase the overall interest for the subject in the class. It might wake up some pupils interest, that would otherwise be lost - which often lead to disturbance in the classes, or even ruin a project for the whole class.

In History it could be about the Roman Empire, World War II. In Society and Biology it can be documentaries about The human body, the Climate Changes, Humanitys destruction of the planet we share with other living beings. Even documentaries of Bad/good food habbits. And so on - there will always be some documentaries, that will tease the children to dig in a little further in the issue, and make them more interested in the subject.

The Equipment

At first I recorded directly into a PC with a TV-Card, but the Quality was just about good enough for a normal CRT-Television, but was also very time-consuming. I bought my first Pioneed DVD-HDD-recorder in 1997 and started collecting all kinds of documentaries - this was even before I started studying to become teacher.

The Software

Today(2024) I mainly use DVD and Bluray-Discs only for moving the recordings into the computer. I extract the VOB and MTS2 tracks with MakeMKV(Payed Software, but reliable), and then I convert the MKV-files to MP4 with HandBrake (OpenSource). I keep the recorded Optical Discs in CD-Boxes (at this time I have approx 1800 Discs and over 6500 unique Productions.), and then I store the MP4 Collection on several external Harddisc-Drives and some favorites on our NAS.

The Webpage and the Database

This Webpage was initially made in old (and as it showed not secure PHP/MYSQL) around 2008, but in 2014 some hackers hacked the server, and ruined my collected information about the videos - There was nothing to get from there, but the website got closed from my provider for security-reasons. Since then I haven't really worked on the Website, but I kept recording new documentaries.

Now today - A purpose afterall?

Today My wife and I use it only as a Database to keep an overview of the almost 20 years of collected documentaries. But newly we experienced that our collection might have a purpose afterall! My wifes nephew and niece aged 10+12 made some essays at school, and we found some documentaries, that we watched together to get a basic understanding of the subject. I hope that they will enjoy the collection, when they need to do another essay in the future!