[Discuss] OT: 8mm to dvd

[John Abreau]

I've got that on my todo list for when I'm working again. I've got
a box full of old 8mm home movies that my parents made when
I was a toddler.

I checked out a number of film conversion services about a year
ago, and the one that looked best to me was

    http://www.mymovietransfer.com/

They do a frame-by-frame scan of the film at 1920x1200, and save it
in Motion-JPEG format on an external USB hard drive. They also take
the time to clean up the film prior to scanning. In addition to the master
on the hard drive, they also provide a DVD of the video which they
convert from the Motion-JPEG master.

Their process will result in far better quality than the more common
process that many services use, which in essence is like playing the
film with a film projector and recording the screen with a digital
camcorder.

Also, the Motion-JPEG master can be read by video editing programs,
so you can add your own special effects, or take 1080p-quality "screen
captures" by saving individual frames to JPEG files.

The cost looks reasonable to me: the base price is $25 for a 50-foot reel
of 8mm film, and there are discounts starting at 20 reels. The hard drive
costs extra, or you can provide your own hard drive. The DVDs also cost
extra, and are only available in addition to the hard drive master.

I never compared it to what other services charge, because the other
services I looked at didn't provide the frame-by-frame scanning or the
edit-ready master file.

If your coworkers don't care about getting lower quality, they can probably
find a cheaper service that uses the more common process.


On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 2:22 PM, Chris O'Connell <omegahalo at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Guys,
>
> This is off topic, but I figured I would ask you all.
>
> Has anyone had any experience converting 8mm tapes to DVD?  A bunch of
> coworkers came to me and asked if I could convert their old 8mm to DVD for
> them.  I actually don't want to, so I'm looking for a reputable service I
> can send these things to.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Chriso
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at blu.org
> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>



-- 
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
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