Home Movie Transfer
Regular, Super 8mm & 16mm Home Movie Film to DVD
(All film types including: Silent, Optical Sound, and Magnetic Sound)
Featuring free pickup and delivery in Ann Arbor and many parts of Washtenaw County.
All Work Performed On-site
All transfer, conversion, and copy of regular, Super 8mm, and 16mm home movie film to DVD is done in Chelsea, Michigan. The person you hand your irreplaceable family legacy memories to is the one who will personally either oversee or perform the carefully designed tasks that will transfer (duplicate) your legacy Easter Sunday home movie films to modern and durable professional DVD or Blu-ray media.
Editing and Enhancements on All Films
All home movie films (whether 8mm or 16mm) are downloaded to a 1080p format with professional grade equipment. Each download is then individually uploaded to an editing sequence where standard enhancements are made such as computer assisted professional color correction (100%) and deleting empty footage. Each is then transcoded for DVD delivery.
For 16mm film we offer a complimentary option to upgrade to Blu-ray media in lieu of a DVD and thereby retain the full 1080p HD resolution available from the larger 16mm format film.
Flicker?
Because of our attention to critical telecine techniques you will never see flicker or what is commonly called a “rolling bar” in your transferred (duplicated) regular 8mm, Super 8mm and 16mm home movies. Film advances at 16-24 frames per second while a television or computer screen will scan at 30 frames per second. Not addressing this miss-match issue results in an annoying pulsation or rolling bar in your converted and transferred family memories.
Special Attention to Archival and the Viewing Experience
We will coordinate with you to maintain any archival scheme or arrangement your films may have. Often times the films have hand written notes on film leader, reels, boxes, or film cans. These notes (written by now departed mom and pops) many times provide important clues to a family history and play a large part in identifying film content. In processing your films we will make every effort to maintain and preserve such archival information during conversion, transfer, and copy. Preserving the link between the physical media and its digital duplication is a critical part of the process.
We offer an option for a nominal fee to clean the film prior to duplication using a process designed specifically for movie film. This not only improves the film quality by removing excessive dust and lint but also gives new longevity to your home movie film. This process is usually only a benefit to films that have been left uncovered to collect dust over the decades or exposed to extremes of heat or humidity.
Custom Titling Option
Custom titling is also available for a nominal fee. With custom titling, text appears on the screen before its associated reel describing briefly what the reel is all about. Use as much text as you like but shorter is usually better.
Want to Edit Yourself?
For those who view the duplication of their family legacy with particular interest and have the personal time available, we offer the uncompressed media either at an additional fee or in lieu of a playable DVD-Video disk. We do the hard part for you duplicating the photonic movie film imaging into the 1080p digital domain with ultra-precision and color correction as uncompressed digital movie media computer files. Anyone with a desktop or laptop computer (PC or Mac) can edit these films using the free home movie software editing applications that come with both Microsoft and Mac operating systems. This makes it possible to cut and paste scenes and add your own audio narration. You may have still living relatives who could add to the audio narration.
Your Family Heirloom Legacy
Your DVD will be delivered with professionally designed graphics coordinated between the interactive menu, the photo quality water resistant label printed directly on the disk, and the DVD case jacket. When you play the DVD you will see a fully interactive menu where the various regular and Super 8mm or 16mm films will be individually selectable for playing by the viewer.
Please take a moment to view the animation of what your finished product might look like. Titling, of course, would be customized.
Don’t Know What’s On Your Films?
You may have a shoe box full of films inherited from mom and pops and have no clue what is on them. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could preview those films to determine a chronology and subject matter before conversion and transfer into the digital domain? For a nominal deposit you can borrow one of our viewers for as long as you need it. Customers typically use them for upwards of a year before we see them again. The full deposit will be applied as a credit for any film transfer you have us do when you return the viewer with your order.
Confidence
We are able to say with confidence that the quality we deliver with our duplication, transfer, and copy process of regular, Super 8mm, and 16mm home movie films to DVD is as good as it gets. We have such complete confidence that we invite you to give us one 3 inch reel (50 feet) of regular 8mm, Super 8mm, or 16mm home movie film (silent or sound) which we will transfer to DVD without charge. If you have already had film transferred elsewhere we will copy at half-price up to 400 feet of that same film when you give us your original DVD. You owe it to yourself to be certain that your family legacy memories on home movie film converted to digital and copied to DVD retain all the quality that modern technology can deliver.
Home Movie Film to DVD
Regular 8mm
This format was an incredibly clever concept of Eastman Kodak in 1932. It was the depths of the Great Depression and the geniuses at Kodak thought of a way to cut costs of home movies dramatically bringing home movies to the masses and massive profits to Kodak. It worked! 8mm home movie film was mass marketed to the public starting in 1932 but only took off big-time after the war. Its use continued until the 1990s when home video took over the market. A sample of 8mm home movie film is shown in the illustration. It was also called “Double 8.”
Super 8mm (Silent & Sound)
Launched (again by Eastman Kodak) In 1965, Super 8mm home movie film was a noticeable quality improvement over regular or double 8mm film. The sprocket holes were made smaller allowing for more projection area. A sample of Super 8 film is shown on the right. If you look carefully at the illustration you will see magnetic striping on both sides. The strip is wider on the left than the one on the right. The wider strip was for recording audio at the time of the film being shot. The more narrow strip on the right was for families to record narration during projection without disturbing the original recording.
16mm (Silent & Sound)
Eastman Kodak introduced 16mm movie film in 1923 but its cost was prohibitive for the masses. It was only for professionals and serious hobbyists (the idle rich). Then in 1932 Kodak introduced 16mm optical sound film. Magnetic audio had not yet been invented. The sound strip appears on the right margin of the illustration.
