Converting old 8mm and various video formats to DVD (screen, connect, program)

[dougnaie]

I found a huge box of old 8mm reels in my parents garage and am interested in converting them to DVD so we can watch them. I also have several vidoes of my own that I would like to transfer. I spoke with a local company that handles this, and wanted to see if anyone has any insight on their pricing...Every 50ft reel is $12.50 - I think they mentioned that it is .25 cents per foot. Alternatively, they will digitize it all and put it on an external hard drive for me to view at home and edit myself. I have a Mac, but have never done anything in iMovie.

So, I guess my question is after the above ramble, should I pay to convert, or digitize and attempt to stumble through myself? If I pay to convert, how is the price I was quoted?

Lastly, are their other options that I am missing?

Thanks in advance.

[Magnum Mike]

Originally Posted by dougnaie

I found a huge box of old 8mm reels in my parents garage and am interested in converting them to DVD so we can watch them. I also have several vidoes of my own that I would like to transfer. I spoke with a local company that handles this, and wanted to see if anyone has any insight on their pricing...Every 50ft reel is $12.50 - I think they mentioned that it is .25 cents per foot. Alternatively, they will digitize it all and put it on an external hard drive for me to view at home and edit myself. I have a Mac, but have never done anything in iMovie.

So, I guess my question is after the above ramble, should I pay to convert, or digitize and attempt to stumble through myself? If I pay to convert, how is the price I was quoted?

Lastly, are their other options that I am missing?

Thanks in advance.

There are many companies such as Plextor, that offer devices you can hook up between the output of your VCR or possibly 8mm projector, to your computer. They process the analog signal from the source and convert it to digital format, then you can burn it on DVD. The only thing you need to do is make sure your computer has enough space on the hard drive because some will store the movies on the hard drive before you can burn them on DVD.

These devices can be found at Best Buy or Fry's Electronics and they usually cost about $30-$40.

[Tek_Freek]

For $12.50 a reel I'd let a pro do it. Unless you've got a budget to follow and the box has 50 reels in it!

Of course you can always batch them 2 or 3 at a time.

I wonder about the 8mm aspect. Do you have a machine to run them? Does it have a line out that you could run to a device used to convert?

Here are a bunch of posts regarding this. http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=003WXX

I googled: convert 8mm to DVD

[Fat Freddy]

Although I haven't worked in it for years, I have a background in film, so my approach might be different from most, but here's how I would do it.

I would get an 8mm editing and splicing setup. Since it's an obsolete format, this equipment can be had for next to nothing.

I would edit out all the good stuff and splice it on one reel to be digitized. No sense paying to digitize garbage.

Then I would send it to be digitized by a lab with the proper equipment that can color correct and balance it, not a digital camcorder that just digitizes the projected image off of a screen, which is what the consumer level equipment you can get on eBay does. It's more expensive to do it right, but if the footage is worth saving, it's worth restoring.

The next step would be to import it into iMovie. Use iMovie 6 or iMovie HD, not iMovie 8. In iMovie you can easily clean up and refine the edits and recut the material into a logical sequence, add titles, credits, fades, dissolves, etc., and a sound track.

The final step would be to burn the finished product onto a DVD.

[dougnaie]

Thanks for all the input so far...I appreciate it. On the one hand, I would like to take it all to the "pro's", but on the other hand, I would like to learn something new, and this could be a good project for the new year. Fat Freddy, do you think the editing/splicing equipment would be difficult to learn to use - I do not have a technical background, although as a mom, I have learned how to do lots of things that I thought would be harder than they were....

Anyway, thanks again. If you think of anything else, let me know!

[Fat Freddy]

Originally Posted by dougnaie

...Fat Freddy, do you think the editing/splicing equipment would be difficult to learn to use..

No, it is really easy. All you do is wind the film from one reel to another while you look at it in a little viewer and mark the pieces you want to remove and then cut them out and join the film back together.

The unit consists of a feed reel, a take-up reel, a viewer, and a splicer.
A glue splicer is best, but a tape splicer would work fine for what you need to do because your final edits will be made on your computer. Just make your initial film cuts wide so you will be able to edit out the splice in iMovie.

Here are of a couple of different units.

http://home.pacbell.net/ptg701/8mm.jpg (broken link)

[Tek_Freek]

Originally Posted by Fat Freddy

Although I haven't worked in it for years, I have a background in film, so my approach might be different from most, but here's how I would do it.

I would get an 8mm editing and splicing setup. Since it's an obsolete format, this equipment can be had for next to nothing.

I would edit out all the good stuff and splice it on one reel to be digitized. No sense paying to digitize garbage.

Then I would send it to be digitized by a lab with the proper equipment that can color correct and balance it, not a digital camcorder that just digitizes the projected image off of a screen, which is what the consumer level equipment you can get on eBay does. It's more expensive to do it right, but if the footage is worth saving, it's worth restoring.

The next step would be to import it into iMovie. Use iMovie 6 or iMovie HD, not iMovie 8. In iMovie you can easily clean up and refine the edits and recut the material into a logical sequence, add titles, credits, fades, dissolves, etc., and a sound track.

The final step would be to burn the finished product onto a DVD.

I like this idea! What an excellent suggestion. Kudos.

[tallrick]

I still like to use 8mm film from time to time for my projects. Also have been working on collecting old home movies that would otherwise be thrown away. In the past I converted our family movies, and those of friends to video tape. It's pretty much the same procedure for digitization. I was thinking of finding a good capture card and converting them to an H.264 format using a high resolution digital camera. It's generally easier to go from film to digital video that from video tape because film is just a number of frames per second. Even a "frame grabber" card could work for this purpose. I am still looking for the right hardware for the purpose, perhaps someone from the Internet Archive has some ideas?

[citybythebay]

Originally Posted by dougnaie

I found a huge box of old 8mm reels in my parents garage and am interested in converting them to DVD so we can watch them. I also have several vidoes of my own that I would like to transfer. I spoke with a local company that handles this, and wanted to see if anyone has any insight on their pricing...Every 50ft reel is $12.50 - I think they mentioned that it is .25 cents per foot. Alternatively, they will digitize it all and put it on an external hard drive for me to view at home and edit myself. I have a Mac, but have never done anything in iMovie.

So, I guess my question is after the above ramble, should I pay to convert, or digitize and attempt to stumble through myself? If I pay to convert, how is the price I was quoted?

Lastly, are their other options that I am missing?

Thanks in advance.

I asked about this a little while back...I recently came across over a dozen 8mm tapes of my brothers and I from the 1960's-70's that I wanted to convert to DVD.

I ended up using a professional video service.
As far as what my rates were:

•16¢ a foot
•$19.95 one time fee
•$29.95 first DVD
•$14.95 ea. additional DVD
They also added background music to fit with the times @ N/C...the tapes were from the 1960's...the music selection was fitting.

The end product was excellent. Very happy with the service.

[Fat Freddy]

Originally Posted by tallrick

...In the past I converted our family movies, and those of friends to video tape...

I have converted VHS tapes both by using a card with composite inputs and with a digital video camera with a pass through feature.

The camcorder pass through gave better results.

Basically it involved connecting the outputs from the VHS playback unit to the inputs of the digital video camera and connecting the camera to the computer's Firewire input and importing directly to iMovie.

Of course the video quality will be no better than the original VHS tape unless you use a an editing program like Premiere or Final Cut wich gives you some enhancement options, but those programs have a pretty steep learning curve.