Film Transfers to Digital

traderrik · Post by **traderrik** » Fri Jul 26, 2002 4:25 pm

Like many people, I want to be able to share some old home movies with our extended family, on both VHS and DVD. My movies are in both 8mm and Super-8 formats.

I naturally want to preserve as much of the good stuff on those old films as possible; in fact, some are very poor quality now (either the original filming was done badly or they have deteriorated over the years, or both) and I certainly don't want to lose more quality in the transfer process.

This is my story, which I offer solely as one novice's opinion and recent experience.

After much study, I determined that going from film to VHS tape and *then* to DVD, etc. would result in lesser quality digital copies. The best way would be to transfer directly to digital tape, Mini-DV in my case, as that's the format of my digital camcorder, and then to my PC via the camcorder's firewire connection. Once I have them on my hard drive I can edit them, arrange the order of play etc; and then burn them on DVD, VideoCD, or dump to my VCR.

There are, of course, several ways to accomplish the transfers from movie film to digital. However, again after reading magazine articles, tons of user comments posted in the many forums, etc. I decided to have this initial step performed by a professional and circumvent the learning curve.

I've now had some of my films done by two different sources, and I must say that there is a *tremendous* difference in the results! (To get a bona fide apples-to-apples comparison, I included one of the same film rolls in both orders.) Granted, two sources is not a wide-ranging comparison of services. But what it said to me was, if there can be such a difference between two places that are in the business, I'm glad that I decided not to transfer my own. And my DVDs are absolutely astounding.

I'm sure that it will surprise no one who's a regular in this forum that the guy whose transfer services I'm sold on is Roger Evans at MovieStuff. For those unfamiliar, his web site can be found at:
http://www.moviestuff.tv

I have no doubt that doing my own transfers would be a good learning experience, and perhaps even enjoyable; and I may decide to tackle that challenge in the future. But given the relatively small number of film rolls that I need to transfer at this time, the investment in time and appropriate equipment (e.g. MovieStuff WorkPrinter) just doesn't work for me.

francesco · Post by **francesco** » Sat Jul 27, 2002 7:37 pm

If you have some (and more) patience, you can try the scanner + software way, have a look at
http://8mm2avi.netfirms.com/

Francesco

traderrik · Post by **traderrik** » Tue Jul 30, 2002 2:25 pm

Thanks for the suggestion, Francesco, but I can't imagine that I could be as pleased with the final result as I am with Roger's (MovieStuff) transfers. And at $15-18 per roll, what a bargain!

Again, if & when I am inclined to do my own transfers, I will just have to have a WorkPrinter. As I indicated, I'm spoiled now!

guest · Post by **guest** » Tue Jul 30, 2002 6:26 pm

Any chance you'd tell us who the other transfer service was?