Film to digital conversion - need help fast!

Factual Questions
1

So I have a bunch (around 100) of old film reels - regular 8mm, no sound, 3" (50 ft) reels.

I would like to have these converted to digital in the next couple of weeks for a memorial service.

The only place local I’ve been able to find is one of these. I called and spoke to the owner and was not exactly impressed with her technical knowledge and expertise.

There’s a number of places online that do this, and I’ve gotten caught in conflicting websites. “Our way is best, those other ways suck!! Here’s why!” “No, that’s a crappy method, we do it the bestest way ever!”

Gahhh!!!

Does anyone know enough about this to clue me in on whatever it is I need to know?

A primary concern is speed, since we’re very short on time. Obviously, price is a consideration - but if I’m paying the kind of money it looks like this will cost, quality is more important than saving a couple of bucks.

Below are the websites I’ve looked at. Recommendations (among these or other companies) would be most welcome!

https://www.filmtransfer.com/
[URL=“http://www.mymovietransfer.com/8mm_Pricing.html”]http://www.mymovietransfer.com/8mm_Pricing.html
http://www.homemoviedepot.com/services/movie/comparison.php
http://www.film-to-video.com/index.html
http://www.videoconversionexperts.com/Film_to_DVD/Film_Transfer_Types.htm
http://www.slidescanning.com/faq-movie-film.htm
http://www.digmypics.com/8mmFilmTransfer.aspx

Thanks much!

2

I think you’re reading too much into this. Yes there are a number of ways to transfer film into a digital format. Some are crude, some are high tech. For your purposes you should be able to find someone in your area who can accomplish your needs for a reasonable price with the quality you are seeking. Any particular shop will say they are the best at what they do when in reality they may do it in a different way than the other guy.

3

Honestly, for this type of service I would crack open the Yellow Pages instead of looking for an online service. If time is of the essence, and the originals are priceless, you probably want to be able to walk into a shop with your originals and hand them to someone instead of ship them off to whereabouts unknown.

Another idea is to post an ad on Craigslist and get local people to basically bid on the project, and explain to you their services, then choose the one you feel best about. Just don’t say “cost is not a factor” in your ad :slight_smile:

4

Do you happen to have a projector and a video camera? You may be able to do it yourself. I converted many rolls of film myself this way. The biggest problem you’ll have is dealing with flicker. Luckily, I had a variable speed projector which allowed me to elimiate the flicker.

If this is for a memorial service, just about any transfer technique will work. You don’t need broadcast quality conversion. Find someone locally to avoid the headaches of mailing the stuff around.

5

A few years ago I got three rolls of my great-uncles 8mm movies from the 1940’s transfered to DVD. I used www.homemoviedepot.com and was happy with the job they did.

6

I have had good experience with these folks:

http://www.videointerchange.com/index.html

7

Thanks for the advice, everyone!

filmore, I have the projector that goes with the film, somewhere. I could probably borrow a camcorder. But the results I’ve seen with that method have been not-so-good.

We’re wanting good quality because we’ll be hanging on to the new versions. The memorial makes it urgent, but we want it done anyway.

I guess we could just do recordings for the service and then worry about doing real transfers later. But I’ve got no idea about running the projector, even if I could find it.

ZipperJJ, yeah I’d rather do it local. Not just the ‘lost in shipping’ problem, but because I’m thinking that spending og-only-knows how long at og-only-knows what temp inside vans/warehouses (it’s 103 here today) can’t be good for them.

I found one place locally that advertised this service. I asked the woman who owns it something like “so how do you do this?”, thinking that she could tell me a little bit about their process. Her reply: “Well, I bought a franchise and went to training for two weeks.” :eek: Her only answer on how it works was “well, it’s a proprietary process on specially built equipment”. IOW, she ain’t got no idea what she’s doing, she just punches buttons and hopes. Maybe that’s what they all do and I just don’t want to know it.

She was however, quick to reassure me that we might be able to squeeze everything on 2 DVDs rather than 3 with some editing. Because when I’m talking about dropping close to a grand on conversion, that last $15 for an extra DVD is gonna be the killer. :rolleyes:

I emailed another place that supposedly does this, but haven’t heard back. They have no phone number or email on their website, just a form. I can’t find them listed anywhere else by that name.

I am hunting down the rumor of another local place, but haven’t been able to get hard info so far.

8

Not necessarily. Most likely she is unwilling to tell someone her method so she doesn’t lose business. I used to work for a professional photographer who had people call her all the time because they just went out and spent a buttload of money on a camera and wanted my employer to show them how to take great photos because they want to become a photographer as a second job.

If I would have heard the response above I would have replied, “So you don’t use a projector and camcorder? I really want this to be done right.”

This way you could confirm whether they do or do not use this method.

9

Well, since there’s not really any way for an individual to do this kind of conversion (other than the aforementioned ‘film the projected movie’), because it requires specialized and expensive equipment, that concern seems a bit unjustified.

I’d hope someone in the business would know that.

I did confirm that she’s not running it through a standard projector onto a screen and filming that. I could not find out which of several modern methods she was using, because she didn’t really seem to know anything beyond how to operate the machine she’d bought.

I may still go with her if I can’t find anything else. But I generally prefer someone I’m going to pay large sums of money to for a professional service, to actually understand what they’re doing and not just be pushing buttons like a monkey. YMMV.

10

Since she’s local, have her do one reel and see how you like the results. She may even have some samples that you can see.

11

I used this place about five years ago: Digital Transfer Systems. I had a reel of 16mm B&W film, about 15 minutes, and they did a fine job transferring it.

I did a fair amount of research at the time, I think, and was fairly impressed with their capabilities and prices. But that was five years ago. Technology has advanced, new companies have come into the business, etc…

But they’re probably worth looking into.

12

In professional filmmaking, the transferring of film to video is called “telecine.” You might look around for local companies that do telecine. They’ll be more professionally oriented, and of course will typically be dealing with 35mm and 16mm film, but there’s a chance some of them might also be able to do consumer format transfers (perhaps as a side business). If nothing else, if you find a good local telecine house they may know who in your area is actually good at doing the kind of work you need.

For most photo and video work, I’ve had much better results working with businesses targeted at professionals than the “save your memories” consumer-type places. It usually costs more, and there’s less hand-holding, but the quality also tends to be higher and the employees are usually more knowledgable. However, I’ve never had anyone do 8mm film transfers.

13

The term for what you want is “telecine”, NOT “video conversion”
“Telecine” gets you professional services
“Video conversion” gets you god-knows-what

Since this is silent. go rent a projector (or see craigslist - I suspect they’re real cheap these days)
and a video camera, find a white wall (smooth, not orange peel). point projector and camera at same spot - hit “record”, then ‘play’. This ensures you have something if whoever you choose to use flakes out,
Luckily, when I needed film cut to tape (back when tape was the top-of-the-line system), I lived in a town with a professional telecine shop - I Iwas doing cartoon collecting, and some were available in only film format. A 6 minute cartoon cost $80.00. You might get a lower rate for silent media, but I doubt it.
Real telecine equipment is expensive - they had (display only, not in use) a machine that, in the late 50’s - early 60’s was used by TV stations to convert a 16mm file into NTSC format for broadcast - it was slightly larger than a refrigerator.

For giggles, try ebay - you can get a plastic box with a frosted plastic screen for $20 - you hang the box over your projector’s lens and point your video camera at the screen - the image is projected onto the screen, from which you record it with your camera.
Using a white wall is a MUCH better way of doing the projector-to-camera bit - at least you get a straighter, more in-focus image.

Hint:
if the machine holds the film vertically, it is probably not a professional system - real machines look like tape decks - large, horizontal decks

14

I disagree with the last two posters. In my experience, “telecine” is the term for optically shooting the projected film with a video camera. This is a real-time process, and was originally used to show movies on broadcast TV. With specialized equipment it can be a step above simply shooting a projected image off the wall with a camcorder, but not much.

These days there are scanners that digitally capture each frame, and these yield vastly better results than ordinary optical processes. The place I used scanned the film, and it seems that all of the places in the OP’s links also have that capability. Look for the references to “scanning” or “frame-by-frame” capture, as opposed to “real-time.”

Then it’s just a matter of picking the company that seems to offer the right services at a price you can afford. Be sure that you’re comparing the prices for comparable services, i.e., scanning vs. real-time, and color correction or not. Since you have lots of footage, you might narrow the field down to two or three candidate companies, and send each one a reel or two, then judge the quality of the service and results before sending off the whole lot.

I also strongly disagree with **lastsong’s **recommendation of trying to capture the footage yourself before sending it off. Unless you know the projector you’re working with very well, and unless it has been well maintained and is in very good working order (all relatively unlikely, IMHO), you are far more likely to damage your originals in this process (and waste a lot of time getting inferior, nearly useless, video) than are any of the services you’ve found online. They may be consumer services, but they deal with film all the time and have more experience than you do, and more reliable hardware.

15

Most telecine houses I’ve seen have multiple methods available, including old-style telecine and film scanning. If they didn’t, their business would be pretty light these days. In any case, my point was that I think using “telecine” as one of your search terms will help you uncover professional level facilities, which tend to have knowledgable employees and are likely going to be able to point you in the right direction for truly high quality work, even if they won’t do it themselves.

I think it’s more likely that you’ll get a good recommendation from a pro facility than from someone focused on inexpensive consumer-level work. My general experience is that consumer-oriented shops tend to focus mostly on price, speed and ease (“don’t make the customer think”) rather than quality. The employees are generally less knowledgable and experienced. And some of them are more focused on getting your business than giving you good information or doing a good job. A pro facility might not want to deal with you at all, but often they’ll send you along to someone who they know is good to get rid of you. These observations are based mostly on video and still photography services (I’ve never worked directly with motion picture film), but I think it’s pretty likely they’ll extend to this situation. Obviously YMMV.

16

Thanks for the clarification, sharding. I agree that you’re probably right about the pros, but I suspect that most will be more expensive than the OP will be willing to pay. And I imagine that many pro services don’t deal with 8mm at all.

I have a little more faith in the consumer-based providers than you or lastsong seem to have, based on my admittedly limited experience with one reel, five years ago. Still, I don’t think most of the providers the OP has found would have remained in business if they were providing crappy transfers and destroying people’s films.

17

That was one of my major questions, was the best transfer type.

Most of the online places seem to do frame-by-frame. One place claims that they have a better method with scanning. I’m not sure if this is true and they have a spiffy new method, or if they’re just marketing whiz.

18

Still trying to track down a local place. Unfortunately, I’m not sure any of them do anything but project & film, they just have a big box to do that.

So far there’s the one mentioned above, which I suspect just has a slightly fancier setup than projecting onto a wall.

I called another place this morning, they seems to be doing the same thing. I’m not entirely sure, the fellow I spoke to on the phone was a bit surly and didn’t want to / couldn’t answer questions.* What is it with these places?

One other place can do it, but not until September. I’ve got a line on a couple more that I’m waiting to hear back from.

  • Contrast that with the other company I called this morning - the phone guy couldn’t answer questions (although he was friendly and did his best) so transferred me to the production guy. It was good that he did - phone guy hadn’t understood my request and they don’t do reel film. But he was nice and did refer me to the surly guy above.

Or the place I called that doesn’t do transfer, but is going to call me back with info on who does.

I live in Oklahoma - I expect service people to be polite and answer questions, or find someone who can. I know y’all Yankees may find this weird, but it’s generally how we do things down here.

ETA: oh yeah, I forgot. We’re thinking about taking in one or two reels for testing. Part of it is the time issue. We also dug up the projector and may try to screen a few reels to see how many are what we want. If Mom was doing all the filming, then she’s not going to be on many, so the whole thing could be moot.

19

I’ll write more when I have more time… but I bought one of these awhile back: http://www.moviestuff.tv/wp_xp.html. It works great although it’s a pretty elaborate setup so I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone. It’s hard to tell for sure but it looks like http://www.videoconversionexperts.com/Film_to_DVD/Film_Transfer_Types.htm is using equipment from Moviestuff (if you look at the little icons), this one perhaps: http://www.moviestuff.tv/dv8_sniper_pro.html.

Ken

20

It’s a very specialized business, and although I understand the desire to deal with a local vendor, it’s unlikely (IMHO) that you’ll find the best service nearby.

As for the site you asked about, without studying each of those sites closely, I suspect that their scanners are more or less equivalent to all the others, especially those that offer HD scanning. HD quality is probably overkill for most ordinary 8mm material, and you can probably get away with SD scans. But if they can do HD, it shows they have a certain level of technical sophistication.

I’ll reiterate my suggestion of sending a test reel or two to each of your top candidates, and letting them know that they’re competing for a much larger job.

Sorry to hear that you’re finding rude and unhelpful people. That’s bad business, regardless of the industry.

Be very, very careful with this. If the projector has been sitting in a closet (or worse, damp basement) for years, it will almost certainly require cleaning and lubing before it’s ready to run your film safely. Listen to it run before threading it up, and see if it sounds smooth and quiet. Try to find a reel that you know you can sacrifice, and use it to test the machine before running more valuable material. Since your reels are all short, you might be better off just looking at them by eye (with a good magnifier, if your eyes are like mine) than risking damaging them on an old projector.