Deep Nostalgia

In episode 3 we have Daniel Horowitz, Genealogy Expert joining us from My Heritage to discuss Deep Nostalgia.

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Show Transcription

[00:00:00] David: Hi, I’m David Allen Lambert, and I’m here with Terri O’Connell. And thanks for tuning in for another episode of Virtual Historians. Today, we have a real treat, a virtual history has never been the same, thanks to MyHeritage. And we have one of the great staffers there that a good friend of Terri and I, Daniel Horowitz, who is the Genealogy Expert and he’s been with the staff from MyHeritage, you know, go on 15 years. I seemed like I’ve known you forever Daniel. And he’s joining us all the way from Israel. So we’re really honored because. Where it’s almost a little after lunchtime, our time. It’s almost time for Daniel to go to bed. So without further ado, Terri, if you want to add anything before we, uh, throw Daniel under the wheels of virtual history and how this new technology of Deep Nostalgia has changed everything.

[00:00:58] Terri: I’m just excited to hear what he has to say. 

[00:01:01] David: It’s great stuff. Uh, I must say that RootsTech for me, which of course, many of you are historians may not know about RootsTech it’s one of the largest genealogical conferences in the world had attracted over a million people. And one of the key things, as far as I’m concerned is Deep Nostalgia.

[00:01:18] Now you’ve probably seen that MyHeritage allows you to color and enhance your photos. This brings it to a level that you won’t believe. Okay, Daniel, it’s all yours. What do you want to tell us about Deep Nostalgia? I know that it’s an interesting name. How did you guys come up with that? 

[00:01:35] Daniel: Well first, please let me say hello and thank you very much for having me here, David and Terri, it’s really a pleasure, uh, to show this technology to a different world, uh, the historical world.

[00:01:49] And, um, listen, I’m, I’m very happy that I am in MyHeritage and that we have this technology and how the public has reacted to this technology. As you said, it was announced during RootsTech, which is kind of an a hundred percent genealogy conference and the world like regular people and historians and societies and groups and companies, and everybody has been trying it.

[00:02:23] And I can give you a little bit of a scoop, but then you will see that in a second. Uh, right now we have more than 22 million animations done in the MyHeritage Deep Nostalgia app. And you can see any kind of animations from close families to, uh, pictures, to historical, uh, events and even statues. Uh, I have seen out there in social media. 

[00:02:58] Um, and the way it works is, is actually very easy. You go to MyHeritage.com/Deep Nostalgia, and you will get to this page. Eh, all you need to do is to troll a picture in here, and I’m just prepared to do that with one of my ancestors, uh, as I was preparing, actually to celebrate a Womans International Day, I took pictures of all my women ancestors, and immediately MyHeritage is going to do actually two things.

[00:03:32] And this is also very important. You mentioned the previous technologies that we are having one of them being the enhancement. So the first thing that MyHeritage will do is to apply that into enhance that image that you are uploading to make sure that the quality of the image is the right one for this. And then we’re going to apply one of the 10 drivers that we have created so far.

[00:04:04] And I will give you another scoop because we are preparing more drivers to people to choose from. Eh, we take a driver by default, depending on the type of image and the position of the head of the person. And we animate that image with that driver, following that driver, as you can see in my screen, uh, it’s something that takes less than 20 seconds. And it’s really amazing to be able to see in this case, my ancestors, but any historical person and historical figure that we may not have videos of them. Coming to life just in front of your eyes. And then of course you will be able to download that video and save it, whatever you want, or just share it with social media and other people.

[00:05:06] David: It’s amazing. Uh, I think that the idea with historical societies and small museums, I mean, I know we are living still in a world where there’s more virtual museums going on, but even with a virtual museum, that takes him key figure from history. Say if you go to a place to have an American President or something, There are no films of someone like Abraham Lincoln or George Washington or other Presidents.

[00:05:34] And you can add that technology from MyHeritage and make that historical figure animated. It it’s unbelievable. Well, I didn’t even think that technology would ever be there. I would always figure that we’d have to use, um, the technology they’re using for movies to do like, uh, the Disney movies. Very, uh, like Pan was at Pandora, Terri? The one that I’m thinking of that where they kind of map where people’s faces are and they put the dots kind of how they did Gollum in the Hobbit.

[00:06:07] Terri: I think so.

[00:06:08] David: Yeah. And I mean, this technology brings it to home and it also makes it, you know, very, uh, easy for anybody to use. I mean, as you just showed it, just move the picture over and wallah, does the rest of the work. 

[00:06:23] Daniel: You mentioned Abraham Lincoln and, uh, we just played a little bit with that and we used a similar technology to create a commercial with Abraham Lincoln.

[00:06:35] Let me tell you it, the technology is really complicated. It takes a lot of time, so, and not to mention the money of course, but to be able to put this technology in place for anybody, any group, any person to be able to apply it, almost for free, um, or to test it for free and then almost for free, eh, for unlimited use, uh, this is really a very important issue.

[00:07:10] David: It’s really great. In fact, I’ve played around with it a bit with some of the pictures of my own ancestors in fact, today as my grandmother’s 125th birthday. And, um, I already did it at RootsTech, but I took her high school picture from 1914 and my own youngest daughter has the middle name Mae after her great-grandmother Lillian Mae.

[00:07:32] And I brought her over to my phone and I said, “Hannah, I want to introduce you to your Great-Grandmother” and she goes, “Dad, I’ve seen this picture before. Oh wow”. It was, it was the expression on people’s faces. I so wish we were at RootsTech Live, Daniel, because if you captured the video of people, seeing their Great-Grandmother or a loved one, come to life for some historical figure.

[00:07:57] The expressions are priceless and probably more animated than what you folks can do right now with the technology 

[00:08:04] Daniel: Well, David, you know, I don’t believe in coincidence. And it’s funny that you’re saying this for, because since RootsTech, about a week ago, we have seen a lot of images, a lot of movies, which is an MP4 movie that MyHeritage creates shared in social media.

[00:08:22] And now what we’re actually looking at is people filming the reactions of those, watching that movie and it really makes a honor to the, to the name, Deep Nostalgia, because you can see people crying. People amazed. I have seen also like very old people kissing those phones with a lot of passion for seeing those ancestors that they remembered moving and talking to them.

[00:09:00] And suddenly after so many years they see them again, smiling and winkling and just becoming alive again. 

[00:09:09] David: You know, I took a picture. My mother’s been gone since 1998. She died at 67 and, um, I have a picture that’s in our spare room. It’s a picture of her when she was about 18 months old as a pretty much like a small toddler.

[00:09:23] And I took it and I colorized it, I enhanced it. So, you know, here’s a color baby picture from 1931 – 32, which I wouldn’t have had of her. And then I animated it. And I’m like, oh my goodness. I’m looking at my daughter because it was the same expressions that she used to make when she was little. And it was really heartwarming.

[00:09:46] I mean, it did bring tears to my eyes. 

[00:09:49] Daniel: This is for example, the one I’m doing now, uh, just as you mentioned, uh, I picked my Great-Grandmother, which she actually died while my mother was pregnant and, uh, I owe her one of my names and being able to see her like right there, moving. And as I said, blinking and smiling, it is really a very good gift for the whole family.

[00:10:19] David: It really is. And especially for loved ones that, you know, may only have one photo. Like I only have one photo of my dad’s father because of a divorce. And he has been my mystery for my whole life, trying to track down what happened to him. He disappeared after 1953 and I’ve been looking for 30 years and I said, I’d always loved to have a conversation with him. And I’m sitting there and I did it and I’m like, I just want, I was floored. I just went backwards and I’m like, Wow. I said, it’s like watching my Dad because it was like the same thing, because I mean, you’re adding, you have a one dimensional image and MyHeritage has taken that technology and spun it around and you bring people to life, I said, it’s right out of Harry Potter.

[00:11:02] Um, and, but it’s your family, not just some animated person and crew with a historians when we have these, um, historical societies and museums back to open. What a great thing kids could do by seeing these certain people in history that are just one dimensional paintings now animated, and as you can do a statue, you can easily do a painting.

[00:11:27] I mean, it’s, it’s great stuff. 

[00:11:30] Daniel: And, and for sure, we’ll bring the attention of the kids into history, which is one of, probably of the most difficult things today to do because those museums and those kind of boring stories and, and I don’t believe they are boring at all. 

[00:11:48] David: Right. 

[00:11:48] Daniel: Uh, but, but for the kids, you know, they’re always in their apps and, and on, on their, uh, technology devices, phones, tablets, whatever, and, and bringing those historical people to life and to be able to see them with movement, it will definitely bring the attention of those young people and then they can do it themselves, which is the other thing, because you don’t need to wait for somebody else to do. You can do this as an assignment. So now you need not only to write something about the local history person and you, of course, you will copy and paste the picture. Now you can add a movie and a video of that person moving on.

[00:12:34] David: You know, and there’s a lot of software out there that allows you to kind of stitch individual MP4 together and kind of make a longer movie. I mean, you can basically go through your family tree or you could go through the American Presidents. I can see where kids are going to take this and run with this type of technology.

[00:12:51] I mean in a lot of people already have a MyHeritage account, but Danielle, can you explain if they’re not a member of MyHeritage, how they can utilize this technology that they can try it out? I believe. 

[00:13:01] Daniel: Definitely. Yes. So, um, if you don’t have an account on MyHeritage, you will still need to register and registration is free and that will give you a few images to try and to test.

[00:13:16] Uh, you don’t need to come all the time to this page, because when you have an account, you will have also a ‘my photo’ section and over there, we’re going to save all your pictures. And all your movies now very important to say is that MyHeritage is saving always the original image as well. We can enhance it, we can colorize it, we can do whatever you want. But the original image is always saved as is. And that is something that MyHeritage understand the importance of this historical value. Of the image and you will be able to see it like the before and after, and always the before is the original, uh, and the after is the enhanced. And if the image was already animated, you don’t need to re animate it every time you can just come here and click the play button.

[00:14:17] And that video that you have created is going to be replayed as many times as you want in here also is where you can choose among the animation. And I have been playing with a lot of them. And I have to tell you that when MyHeritage choose one as a default for a particular image, we know why we’re doing it.

[00:14:40] And we’re taking a lot of the information from the original image and compare and match it with the most suitable, uh, driver, in this case. And then you can download or share it from there. And the images is always yours. Whatever you have in the account, if you don’t want them anymore up there, you can delete it or you can keep it there forever and share it with the whole world.

[00:15:06] David: It’s tremendous. I mean, I don’t know how much effort would be to just kind of show how you can take for those who have not used MyHeritage. Colorizing and enhancing Daniel, do you have a black and white picture that you could just show our viewers how to do that. 

[00:15:21] Daniel: This one is one is, is, is black and white and you see that it has not been colorized because the colorize, uh, icon is right there.

[00:15:31] Okay. So I’m going to click it for you. And I’m going to add that not only black and white pictures, David, but I do know that historical societies have a lot of images taking probably in the fifties and sixties, even the seventies that today they are fade. And they’re reddish or brownish and they lost the color.

[00:15:55] MyHeritage has also, uh, a different technology applied to the same button. So when you click the colorize, we detect, if the photo was black and white, we will apply colors. If the photo was colorized, was in color, but it was fade. Then we will apply a different technology in order to bring those colors.

[00:16:19] To live. So as you can see, this is the image that is already colorized, and you can see the difference between the original one and the colorized one. The face looks more vivid, the dress, also the details is, is really nice. 

[00:16:43] David: Is unbelievable how easy this technology is. And I ask all of our Virtual Historians viewers to try out MyHeritage.

[00:16:53] I mean, you probably already have this news has kind of gone viral, but we wanted to bring this with you. And, uh, we’re very lucky to have Daniel as a longtime friend and I was delighted when Terri reached out to Daniel and asked him to be on the show, but to see this firsthand is amazing and just think of the uses of this.

[00:17:14] And one of the things Daniel, I wanted to toss out, and I think Terri and I were kind of toying around with us. So one of the things with virtual reality is of course people buy Oculus headsets or other, other view, viewers like that. Cause I remember roots check 2020 when you have the VR booth and you had me put it on and I was on the Mayflower.

[00:17:36] Which was great, but picture this technology with a VR headset in your ancestors standing right before you. 

[00:17:44] Terri: Oh my gosh!

[00:17:45] David: And I think the sky’s the limit. You guys are definitely, this is amazing. 

[00:17:50] Daniel: I don’t know how bad it will sound if I say it, but this only proves that MyHeritage has its eyes in the future and we don’t stop and we will not stop to bring you the latest technology and the best technology.

[00:18:09] Not only for genealogy. Also for historical events and historical, uh, a material. As I said, we did, uh, the Abraham Lincoln and we are working also in other features, uh, that will be both for historians, genealogy. And the idea is basically to get closer, the regular people, the regular John. Walking down the street.

[00:18:41] As I said, uh, into this part of the, of the area of the story and, and their own stories and their own histories. 

[00:18:51] David: It truly does bring history back to life for people. And especially as you had mentioned about kids. Kids are on their phones, on their apps. Wait, we can make them enjoy history. With that technology.

[00:19:05] That’s a foot away from their face. And it’s great. Terri. I know that you’ve been enjoying the videos. Yeah. I see the expression on your own face. Any questions you have for Daniel or anything? Cause I’ve been kind of going on for most of this. 

[00:19:17] Terri: Um, I don’t have any questions, but I do want to say, um, congrats to MyHeritage for being in Apple’s top, um, apps for the past few days.

[00:19:26] That’s amazing. And I’m sure it has a lot to do with the Deep Nostalgia and everybody. Um, to upload their pictures and such.

[00:19:36] Daniel: The idea is to, again, to take advantage of that, to move those people into the historical path, into the genealogy path. Basically to help them store remember and treasure all their memories.

[00:19:54] Um, and if, if you’re bringing the app, uh, just a few weeks before we release this technology, both in the app and the website, we also released a very important feature in the app, which is the possibility to record an audio with that photo. So you cannot. See your ancestors or a historical person, but if you have a memory, if you have a history that you want to share, you just need to click one button in the app and that audio is going to be attached to the image and it will be share with others in the website. 

[00:20:36] Terri: Amazing. 

[00:20:37] David: It really is, you know, in Daniel, I think a lot of historians that may again, not be genealogists, generally not, may not use MyHeritage. Um, tell them what they’re going to get. If they become a member, I know you have countless databases and of course the DNA is a whole other, um, story about how much technology you have available.

[00:21:00] Daniel: Eh, I’m not a salesperson. So I’m going to start as I always tell people, start for free, try it. And then you decide what you want to do. So, uh, you open an account for free. You get a few Deep Nostalgia images. You have a few colorize it or a few enhancement. Also you will be able to build a family. For free. You can put over there up to 250 individuals in the family tree.

[00:21:31] MyHeritage is going to apply all the technologies and we have what we call Smart Matches and smart ran Record Matches. The Smart Matches are matches between family trees. And they may be other users already building trees for the individuals in your tree. Record Matches will match your people with the records.

[00:21:54] Currently, MyHeritage has 13.1 billion historical records and very important also from all over the world because MyHeritage is an international company. We support 42 languages, meaning that we have records really from every corner in the world. And we are working hard to bring you more records. Now, all this is what you’re getting for free.

[00:22:23] What you cannot do with a free account is accepting those matches. Looking at all the records. We have some free collections and we have a pay., some paid collections or contact other users in the, MyHeritage platform. So again, so for the free feature, you’re getting a lot, you’re getting quite a good taste of everything that MyHeritage has and then depending on your needs. Uh, no worries. MyHeritage is also very good. Pointing you to a pay wall and to letting you know how much you need to pay. I’m pretty sure we will also give you a discount. 

[00:23:04] David: I, I think Terri and I found out a long ago that you really test drive this and you’re addicted really quick. And, uh, I must say that MyHeritage, who becomes your heritage when you do DNA because I find connections and I was able to find a photograph through one of the MyHeritage, um, matches that I had my DNA and he was the brother of my great-grandmother, who died in 1922. And I’ve never seen a photograph of the male member of their family. And he died in 1927. So I’ve connected with his great-grandson.

[00:23:39] Who is the same generation as me and we’ve exchanged stories. We also compare, I’m in his family group, he’s in mine. So it’s, it’s amazing. So, and this is only March 2021, and I know you can’t reveal anything else going on this year, but you got another few months. 

[00:24:01] That weren’t to even halfway into the summer. I, I know that you’re going to have other surprises, so… 

[00:24:07] Daniel: yes.

[00:24:08] Um, and, and, and one of those which I cannot mention is, is actually related to the DNA and, and again, Uh, I, I have to admit, I may have the best job that I can ever get. Uh, because I have a peek on what’s coming in the future. And one very important thing for MyHeritage against other companies in the market, is that you see that some, some companies just release a feature and they just go straight with that feature until the end.

[00:24:42] And then people are thinking, well, what happened with this? What happened with that? No, we keep on developing things, both for the DNA. As you mentioned, we keep bringing records. We keep also improving the family trees and the family tree views. Oops. I said too much already. Uh, but yes, you need, you need to keep your eyes open and keep your pace with MyHeritage because we are not stopping for anybody.

[00:25:11] David: That’s excellent. Well, MyHeritage.com is something that I definitely advise you to check out. And for free, you can take some of those historical photographs that you have lying around, gathering dust and bring new life to them. And then maybe you might even be curious as a historian to find a little bit of your own history.

[00:25:34] So Daniel, thank you so much for joining us today. And as always, it’s a pleasure seeing you. I look forward to when it’s not a virtual visit and a real one. 

[00:25:44] Daniel: Yeah, I’ve looked forward for that. And thank you, David and Terri for inviting me. 

[00:25:50] Terri: Thanks Daniel. We really appreciate it. 

[00:25:53] David: All right, until next time I’m virtually going to be checking in to what your comments are.

[00:26:00] So do reach out to us on our social media platforms that Terri will give you. And if you have something new, exciting, and technologically inviting that you want to share, we’d love to have you as a guest. And again, all that information will be at the end of this video. All right until next time I’m virtually yours, Dave and Terri, sign it off.