General non-MG related discussions. No politics here please!!
We have many boxes of old 8mm and Super 8 taken by my parents from the late 40's up till the early 70's. I know some of the stock may be in bad shape but does anyone know of a person or place that can transfer this to something newer like DVD?
Carl,
I don't know who would do it professionallly right now. My cousin took a lot of his mothers movies
from the 30's of our family and transferred them to VHS and now I'm getting them converted to DVD
to give to our sons for Christmas along with the family history pictorial that I put together of our family.
You might want to check out some of the local photo stores in your area. I know our local camera store
does it but they have about an 8 week backlog right now.
Some time I'll tell you about the pictorial I'm putting together. Right now it's about 300 pages.
George
I thought it was hard to find someone who could do that but a quick google search did show a professional video production business about five miles from my brother in NH.
Carl,
My mother in law transfered about 2 1/2 hr's of 8MM film to DVD last year. We found a local person who had the equipment etc to do it. She opted to only go with titles w/ dates etc before each segment but not to add sound (music)... it was still a little pricey though.... 450$ for the transfer with 5 copies and the master but to her it was worth it to have them preserved and she gave them to her kids at Christmas.... everyone was so thankful for them..... I think they played the DVD's 2 or 3 times the day.
Good luck....
Some of the expense for film transfer reflects labor to repair the films. Some film,that was spliced from smaller reels to make bigger longer running reels, have splices that have fallen apart by this point in time. Age, storage, all affect the film's condition, so expect that some unforseen work will have to be done before actual transfer can even begin. And if they are handed a crate full of 50 ft. reels straight from Kodak to your relatives, there will be work to edit them together for the DVD format plus, as you say, any titling or other editing or retouching. I don't know if they make a transfer unit for DVDs like they did for VHS, but you might also look for that online ~ if you need another project.
The stuff of films, celluloid is indeed very fragile. Before I rushed anything consdidered a treasure I would begin asking all the questions about the "how" they can stablize the reels BEFORE they attempt a transfer. The real Science lies at UCLA or USC who have the archieves of most of Hollywood, and where Ted Turner endowed inorder to do his part in "saving" the classics.
I think I would at least try to contact a major University who have a Cinema/Photography Department and check the retail guys methods out with the Education guys recommendations. You might even luck out if the University folks are interested in a "project".
Also keep in mind that just in the old days, the "masters" are the gold mine....your original reels or negatives if you have them. In other words, your celluloids if you consider them of any value, are the most valuable. Even with the most sophisticated digitized whatever, the copy will always be different and often less than the original.
Most film from the 1930s forward was not using nitrocelulose base stock and is not nearly so fragile or chemically reactive as the older stuff was. Very likely, if all you are dealing with is home movies made since WW2, you are more likely to encounter problems of fading colors and cheap films (Ansco, Perutz, house brands) than film that has welded itself together or is moldering away in an agonizingly slow burn into chemical ash.
As Robert says,the old nitrocelulose base films are very touchy and any attempt to work with them should be through a lab or university who makes it their business to restore and rescue those films. We had one burst into flames in the projector at Cal-state Long Beach back in the 60s, and about the only way to put it out is with a pair of scissors (cut the burning part out) and let that burn itself out. However, about all that the post WW2 stock will do is melt from higher heat halogen bulbs, fall apart at the splices, or suffer fading due to cheap dyes or poor handling of the processing chemistry.
Back when vhs came out I bought a divice to convert 8mm to vhs also had 16 mm of wedding that i did. It was a box with mirrors in it and u mounted projector on oneside and vhs cameral on the other side. All the slides I had I projected on screen and used vhs camera to record.
When dvd recorder came out I bought one and put all vhs on dvd. Whats next?