Converting Old Family Movies to Digital

[Frank Petronio]

Being a photographer, I'm the next closest thing my family has to a videographer or filmmaker... except I've managed to avoid nearly everything related to motion imaging and am at a low-consumer level of awareness.

25 years ago I took our family's combined collection of 16mm, 8mm, and Super-8 movies from the 1930s to the early 1980s to a local camera store where a technician played the movies onto a screen with a video camera running. The end result was nine-hours of VHS tape, most of which is incredibly boring but each little segment contains at least one important moment (to somebody....)

I do not even own a VHS player anymore and I imagine a 25-year old tape is stuck together by now. I think most of the original film is still viable, although it isn't getting any better with age.

For someone like me, who would love to please his older relatives with a library of their old home movies, what do you recommend?

I would really like to send the box of movies off to a professional service for digital conversion. I would really like to keep this within a $500 to $1000 budget. I have little interest in doing it myself, although I could see eventually editing the footage into a reasonable 30-minutes of prime coverage (while still keeping the original footage).

So... Question One: a good mail-order service for old film to digital conversion?

Second Part... once they are digitized, then what? I am experienced enough with the internet to understand that a free YouTube or Vimeo account may no longer be free or even existent with little warning. But what combination of back up and sharing strategies makes the most sense in terms of providing long term storage and also access by a wide range of family members living all over the world? I have good back-up practices with my own work (multiple drives including off-sight, prime material on the cloud and printed out, original film in archival storage materials).

Third, I understand that saving still images as JPGs and TIFs is a better long-term format than some proprietary file format (like PSDs, NEFs, even DNGs). What would be the most stable, independent, and wide-spread video format I should be looking to use?

Also, while backing up a couple of TBs isn't too hard, 9 hours of footage saved in a raw format is probably going to be a lot more than that. Prohibitively so, in spite of lowering memory costs.

Don't ask me about long-term storage and editing of old family stills... there are literally millions and I am completely overwhelmed in that department too!

 

[Dwig]

... But what combination of back up and sharing strategies makes the most sense in terms of providing long term storage and also access by a wide range of family members living all over the world? ...

You have your own domain. There should be some way to setup an area there that is separated from your business presence that could be used for family images and videos. When you own the site you have the control to keep it available.

 

[Frank Petronio]

You have your own domain. There should be some way to setup an area there that is separated from your business presence that could be used for family images and videos. When you own the site you have the control to keep it available.

Actually having a domain and hosting for family video isn't that much better than posting them on You Tube with privacy controls. They require constant maintenance.... at least Google keeps You Tube fairly secure compared to most DIY webmasters.

The problem with web hosts is that they all go bad, usually within the time span of my making a multi-year commitment to their services. Media Temple, Webcore Labs, etc. all went to pot once I signed up! And those hosts all were top-level, highly regarded premium hosts before they dropped the ball.

 

[daveleo]

Frank

Backgorund:

I went through this process years back (maybe 20). Edited 13 hours of my dad's 8mm film down to 50 minutes of viewable footage. Edited - I mean litterally cut and spliced pieces of 8mm fillm - took 3 months, lots of baggies and labels..
Made a VHS tape (using a rented camera and just filming the projected movie onto a movie screen) and some copies. Then lost ! ! my original tape.

Years later, I sent the 3 reels of edited film (50 minutes) to Digital Transfer Services (www.dtsav.com) and had the make one DVD, playable on a TV. That cost $75 (again, about 50 minutes, straight run, no special effects, no titles, no music).

From that, I made personally one MOV format file (700Mb if I recall) that is playable on a computer (640 X something).


Comments:

This is quite the challenge, esp due to the 3 movie film formats you have.

Who will watch 9 hours of movies for a few glimpses of their favorite scenes?

Is a DVD for television more appropriate than an MOV files for computers?

Who would sit at a computer for that long to watch a Youtube (or whatever) movie? Obviously you need to break it into scenes so viewers can jump in and out or possibly into several movies.

I can't imagine that anyone would edit your film for you, so what you will get is a straight copy, as projected.

Renting projectors and doing it yourself is a possibility, but there are tricks to that also - you need to vary projector speed evr so slightly to eliminate flutter , so you need variable speed projectors (and a LOT of patience), so don't lunge into that without doing your homework.

After walking through all that, I don't know . . . lot of work. Maybe bite off small pieces. Maybe 8mm first as a test run ?

Well, I didn't solve any problems for you, but maybe that rambling has some good facts you can use.

 

[finguanzo]

Frank, these are vhs's..?
If so, you can get a vhs/dvd combo for about $100.... Play vhs and record onto the dvd, at that point your set.. Its on a dvd, you can play it, capture it on a pc, do whatever you want...

edit:
just realized you might want it direct from film...
If you dont mind the devil... 🙂
http://www.dvdwalmart.com/film_to_dvd.aspx ($20 first 125 ft. .16 each additional.)
Costco also has a service I think..
Dont know about the quality, but sure is cheap...

 

[Dwig]

Actually having a domain and hosting for family video isn't that much better than posting them on You Tube with privacy controls. They require constant maintenance.... at least Google keeps You Tube fairly secure compared to most DIY webmasters.

The problem with web hosts is that they all go bad, usually within the time span of my making a multi-year commitment to their services. Media Temple, Webcore Labs, etc. all went to pot once I signed up! And those hosts all were top-level, highly regarded premium hosts before they dropped the ball.

All true, but with your own domain when the host goes south you can move the domain to a new host and the large extended family doesn't need to learn new URLs, etc.