Restoring your own 8mm footage (1 Viewer)

[snoopy28574]

I need to restore my family's 8mm footage. I'm looking at my movie transfer.com for scanning. They offer uncompressed 2K.


Question 1


Should I even bother with a HD transfer 8mm elements. I should add that they have been mostly un played and in an attic in NC which has hot summers. Winters do get very cold for brief periods. I got my grandfather to play back some of it 10 yrears ago and it looked better than vhs.



Question 2


They say at my movie transfer .com that to restore, they reduce grain and apply artificial sharpening. I should have them send me raw data and do it myself ? I'm thinking yes .Does any one disagree ?

 

[theonemacduff]

I'm only familiar with slides, not movie film, but I would say – chose a reel that you don't particularly care about, request that they NOT reduce the grain too much and NOT sharpen it overmuch and evaluate the results. I think trying to clean up potentially hours of images could be a huge chore. Last time I looked at their site, PixelFarm said they will sell you software to do the job, but my guess is that their program(s) would be prohibitively expensive for the home user. Why not just get transfer.com to scan in the film and leave it untouched, and suffer the blots and scratches of outrageous film deterioration? Once you have the film scanned, cleanup can be deferred until it is easier and cheaper.

 

[snoopy28574]

Thank you for your reply. If transfer.com is faster then ill go that route. At this point it needs to be done asap. My grandfather may not live long.

Originally Posted by theonemacduff

I'm only familiar with slides, not movie film, but I would say – chose a reel that you don't particularly care about, request that they NOT reduce the grain too much and NOT sharpen it overmuch and evaluate the results. I think trying to clean up potentially hours of images could be a huge chore. Last time I looked at their site, PixelFarm said they will sell you software to do the job, but my guess is that their program(s) would be prohibitively expensive for the home user. Why not just get transfer.com to scan in the film and leave it untouched, and suffer the blots and scratches of outrageous film deterioration? Once you have the film scanned, cleanup can be deferred until it is easier and cheaper.

 

[briankkatz]

I need to restore my family's 8mm footage. I'm looking at my movie transfer.com for scanning. They offer uncompressed 2K.


Question 1


Should I even bother with a HD transfer 8mm elements. I should add that they have been mostly un played and in an attic in NC which has hot summers. Winters do get very cold for brief periods. I got my grandfather to play back some of it 10 yrears ago and it looked better than vhs.



Question 2


They say at my movie transfer .com that to restore, they reduce grain and apply artificial sharpening. I should have them send me raw data and do it myself ? I'm thinking yes .Does any one disagree ?

yes now it's not a issue to convert your old 8 MM video in different format , now you can easily Convert your 8mm to DVD and enjoy the high Quality video for long life with out any disturbance.