A Modern Spin on an Old Family Holiday Story

Using New Tech to Refresh an Old Video

Dec 27, 2024

Back in 2021, I made a video of one of my dad’s Christmas stories with the help of extended family. Was it easy? You've heard the term "herding cats"? Yup. Exactly.

But it was fun. Each person recorded a part of the story, and it felt like we were bringing everyone together, even from far away. That was right before the AI explosion. AI has changed things a lot, so I decided to revisit the project and give it a fresh spin with new tools. (And some not so new.)

Here’s a quick breakdown of the tools I used and a little bit about what worked, what didn’t, and advice for anyone curious about trying some of these out.

The Tools That Made It Happen

Google Voice

This was back in 2021 but is worth mentioning now. Google Voice made it easy to collect audio from extended family. I had them leave voice mail, then downloaded the recordings as MP3s, and everything stayed organized. Google Voice has been around since 2009. That’s like 98 years in internet time. I still have voice messages from family that I saved over a decade ago.

Handy Hint: Don’t assume people know how to record well. Give clear instructions like, “Make sure you’re in a quiet place and speak directly into the phone. If you make a mistake, just pause and restart your current sentence.” Oh, and also, maybe, "By quiet, I mean, turn off your TV, and lock the dog in another room."

Why I chose this tool: It’s simple, reliable, and free.

Canva

I used Canva to add Santa hats to photos of my great-grandparents. It’s good for quick, creative edits without needing design skills.

Handy Hint: Canva’s endless templates can be overwhelming. You can get stuck trying to choose one, sort of like looking for something good to watch on Netflix. I skip most of them and focus on a few simple elements (like those hats.)

Why I chose this tool: It’s intuitive and versatile, perfect for small projects. It also has a really great “grab” tool that lets you take something out of an image and move it around or use it elsewhere.

Cynthia Jane Parks and husband Edmund Wilmot Hubbard, taking at the time of their marriage, about 1863.

Auphonic

Auphonic cleaned up the audio, reducing background noise and balancing volume. I had access to something in my video editing software called “reduce background noise” in 2021, but it didn’t do nearly as well as Auphonic did this week.

Still, there are things I don’t know how to fix. My son called from vacation with a lot of background noise. I was able to get rid of that, but his voice was muffled. I tried using a “high pass filter” in a different audio tool to make it more clear. Then it became very sharp, almost piercing. I suspect an audio engineer could help more, but I also suspect the audio engineer would say, “Get a new recording.”

Why I chose this tool: It’s powerful, easy to use, and makes messy audio sound much better.

Here's an example of removing background noise.

My granddaughter in the car with background noise:
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The same recording after I ran it through Auphonic:
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Tools for Image and Video Generation

For image and video generation, I played with:

Images: DALL·E 3, Ideogram
Videos: Runway, Sora

I accessed most of these through Abacus AI’s ChatLLM feature, which lets me sample a variety of tools for one affordable price. It’s a great way to try different services without committing to multiple subscriptions. (Not sponsored. Just using.)

These tools are fascinating, but as a beginner, I found them frustrating as well. There is much to learn.

For example, Sora has a lot of potential but might not be quite ready for prime time. It has rules to in place to prevent deepfakes, so it won't use images of people, even if they’re AI-generated. The irony? Sora sometimes trips over its own rules and refuses to work with its own videos.

I'm being much kinder about this situation than many commenters on Reddit, who didn’t hold back in sharing their frustrations. But I really liked some of the videos Sora created, including the man-with-a-still scene in my video. As of this writing, this is a "just released" product that may have growing pains for a bit.

Note: I’ve included my prompts below. I didn’t try to get fancy with my prompts for this first round of experiments.

Sora: The year is 1874. inside a rustic cabin we see a man from the back. He is tinkering with an old fashioned still.

Runway worked well for animating photos and produced this animation of my great-grandparents.

Runway: The two characters look at each other and smile. The man winks. (Thoughts: Instead of winking, he blinked.)

Ideogram stood out for creating images with text—it actually spells words correctly, which AI Image Creation tools have traditionally struggled with! I didn’t use any text in images with this video, but here’s an example of an image where I tried it out.

Ideogram: A giraffe wearing a scarf and holding a sign that says "keep your neck warm."

Which is my favorite? Wow. It's too soon to say. I got a little confused trying to keep track of what I did where. It was like trying to remember where I left my keys while juggling groceries. (If you aren't careful, the keys end up in the fridge. True story!)

I’ll come back and talk more about these tools as I become more familiar with them. (Memo to future self: Slow down and take better notes.)

Suno AI

Suno AI helped create the accompaniment for my granddaughter’s singing. It generated a simple backing track that added depth to her performance and made the moment feel special.

Why I chose this tool: It was easy to add music without needing advanced skills or equipment, and I've been using it a lot, so I could do something relatively quickly

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Suno: Create, Upload a song (enough of her singing that Suno understands what key we are in and what the melody is), Extend and choose “Instrumental”, edit in a video or audio app to get a section that works perfectly as accompaniment.

Advice for Telling Family Stories with the Latest Technology

If you’re thinking about using some of this new tech to preserve family stories, it helps to treat it like you're unboxing a new kitchen tool. It might seem complicated at first, but once you try it out, you find that you just need a bit of practice. (Unlike some of those pressure cooker gadgets. Don’t get me started on those!)

If I were starting out now, I would pick one tool to experiment with and take notes on what I liked or didn’t and what I might use it for. Little family projects don’t need to be grand. Small things that I can text are the most likely to catch my grandkids’ attention.

Here are three fun places to start:

Use one of these tools to create a little meme based on an ancestor and text it to whichever relative will most appreciate it. Ideogram might be good for this.
- Link: https://ideogram.ai/
Go over to Suno and tell it to make you a country song about Uncle Ivan, who was really good at fixing things and liked the ham radio. His call letters were K7ATX, and when he died at a ripe old age, his son sent us all a message: K7ATX is off the air. (Uncle Ivan’s story is spoken for, but I bet you’ve got someone just as memorable. And you don't have go all Opryland if that's not your gig. Suno can do classical, lofi, Gregorian chants ...)
- Link: https://suno.com
Go interview great grandma. Ask open ended questions that get her talking about her life. Record it on your phone or with a digital recorder. Then send that recording through Auphonic to clean up the sound. (You can also use AI tools to transcribe your interview. We'll talk about those tools another day.)
- Link: https://auphonic.com

Wrapping It All Up

This project gave me a chance to mix family history with some fascinating new tools. Do you need all these fancy new tools to tell good stories? Of course not, but I enjoyed how they added a creative spark to the process, letting me try new things that might capture the attention of my grandkids and their cousins.

You can watch the finished video here:

A Christmas Story written by my dad in 1976, about his mother and grandparents in about 1876, performed by a couple of dozen family members in 2021, refreshed with the latest tools in 2024.

Tools mentioned here: