# 8mm film to digital transfer



## sliderule (Aug 28, 2001)

I have about 1,200 feet of regular color 8mm movie film, mostly of my children, that I want to transfer to DVDs. Realizing that there will be some loss of quality, even with the best process, I have gleaned that the best affordable process is perhaps a direct filming via a 3CDD camera to DV tape in the AVI file format. I have Googled every transfer firm on the Internet until I'm blue in the face and the more I learn about the process the less I know. I've obtained prices ranging from $150 to $500. Bear in mind, that I want to preserve the best archival quality initial product, which I will then edit and title using something like Adobe Premier and ultimately burn to DVDs for my children. I'll save the master DVI tape for use with future improved technology, such as high density. If any of you have any suggestions as to the best processor, I would appreciate a recommendation.


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## kiwiguy (Aug 17, 2003)

Some years ago we had a large number of 8mm movies transcribed to VHS, which I have since digitised.

The initial resolution was not great (these were 1950's home movie's) and there was some loss to VHS in the analogue to analogue process. There was further loss when I made the last analogue to digital conversion but at least the loss should now stop there.

Given that the first transition for you will be the last, an terms of transcribing to a digital format I would anticipate that there will be little loss, provided that the compression used is not too severe.

As we only had 1 local company able to do this for us in the '90s there was little choice, but it would have been great to get digital in the first round.


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## sliderule (Aug 28, 2001)

Thanks for the feedback, Kiwi. My location in the swamps in the bootheel of Missouri prevents my visiting a transfer house, so I'm relegated to doing business over the Internet. And it's a jungle out there populated by some charlatans and some good guys. The problem is sorting them out. Based on what I've read, the tranfer process available when you had your film transferred to VHS was quite lossy. In my case, I hope to minimize that loss. I've gleaned that MiniDV tape with the imagery in the AVI format is probably the best at this time and I'll save it as a master. From there I hope to burn the edited copies to DVDs for the children, which will result in some loss - but I'll have the master availabale for the next technology upgrade. Thanks again and if anything I've opined is wrong, please hit me over the head with a 2x4.


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## kiwiguy (Aug 17, 2003)

All sounds very "sound" to me sliderule.

In NZ, they are 100 x 50's, not 2 x 4, by the way.
(We used to have "4 x 2"'s until 1967 though)

Life of DV tape appears to be 20+ years, provided its a good recognised brand. The problem in 20 years may be finding a tape drive that understands the format I suspect.


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## sliderule (Aug 28, 2001)

I'm chuckling at your 100x50s remark. And, yes, obsolecsence ever rears its ugly head. Who, for example, wants the Frederich Post Duplex Versalog Whatever slide rule that got me through engineering school from 1954 to 1958. Only another old geezer suffering from advanced nostalgia, I suppose. I hope things "down under" are better than they are in the USA.


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## sliderule (Aug 28, 2001)

Kiwi, before Mike Cermak kicks me out of this venue, albeit unlikely since I send him some money kinda regularly, would you mind taking a look at this fim-to-digital transfer web site and opining about it? http://www.film-2-dvd.com/


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## kiwiguy (Aug 17, 2003)

They have the required attributes for me.

They have a physical address and phone number.

They offer a free ($5) sample (well worth looking at)

Their frame by frame process would be about the best you would get for capturing the most quality I suspect, but it's not my primary field.

Google turns up nothing untowards, but is worth a look as other companies also use them (a good sign). Bet it's not cheap though.

Don't think I could find my slide rule now....


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## thecoalman (Mar 6, 2006)

I don't like pointing people to other forums but in this case everything you could possibly want answered about places to use is here. It's quite an extensive list and recent as well. http://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=252746

The trouble with doing it your way is that you're probably going to run into a flicker problem due to the different framerates, this is pretty common. If you're not using a high end cam with manual controls all the more problems you're going to have in addition to the fact most consumer grade cams come no where near the video resolution of high end models.

I've read a few posts about this as I have plans to do this with some family footage myself shortly. The best method with the best results I've seen is using a telecine machine -or- a flatbed scanner. Believe it or not the flat bed scanner seems to be the best method but I' can't seem to find one that will work automatically. There's a lot of articles on "home brew" methods for doing this but assembling the images into a video of any length is very time consuming.

Ideally IMO I'd look into getting the footage *scanned* to high resolution individual frames saved in a lossless image format like tiff. If possible do not have them assemble the video for you. Better video editors are more than capable of assembling images in a sequence. Once you have that you truly have a archive for the ages.  This will probably cost $$$ but if money is not an issue it's definitely something to look at. Personally I'd shy away from using DV since the footage is either going to be recorded interlaced by your video cam or is going to be telecined to interlaced footage. With HD and the inevitable use of progressive displays on the horizon this is not an ideal format for the future as far as 8mm is concerned since it is already progressive. If you already have the projector and the cam no hurt trying though...

If you do a search for telecine, 8mm scanner and similar you'll come across a lot of information.


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