Transfering Old Home Movies On To Video Tape (1 Viewer)

[MatS]

My parents have some old 8mm reel to reel movies I would like to have transfered to video. Does anyone have any recommendations for a respectable/reasonable company that does this? I was thinking of Wolf Camera as an option http://www.wolfcamera.com/1-800-643-...g/video.asp#(I am in the Chicagoland area). Secondly should I have this done now on vhs or wait till the price goes down to have them transfered onto dvd?

 

[DonnyD]

If you could get some type of output from your reel to reel, you could easily copy to vhs or better yet, run it through a computer and burn it off on cdr. Of course the computer would have to have a compatible video card and software to handle the transfer.
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[MatS]

thanks Donny but that is not an option, any other suggestions

 

[Randy Tennison]

Mat,
If you look in the yellow pages under video, you should be able to find several places that can transfer 8mm to video. Some places send it out to a lab, so be wary of that, if it is un-replaceable film.
Also, make sure that you are working with a reputable company. My in-laws had a video that was made in Germany that they wanted transfered to VHS (it was in PAL). They had watched it before. It was Oktoberfest, and then a section with their cousin driving a train around Germany.
They took it to a company to have it transferred. It came back on 2 VHS tapes. The first one was of Oktoberfest. The second tape, which was supposed to be the train footage, somehow became . . . GERMAN PORN!
Leave it to my saintly mother-in-law to make the comment (after watching the entire movie in fast forward) "And it isn't even GOOD German Porn!"
We still are not sure what happened. When the company played back the original tape, the porn was on it. It wasn't there when my in-laws watched the tape in Germany (or at least that's what they claim!

 

[Andrew W]

I've looked into this for a bunch of 8mm film from my younger years. DO NOT get your film transfered to any form of VHS. You want to get it transfered to Digital Video (DV). DV is lossless and you can edit it on a computer later if you want to. You can also easily transfer it to video CD or DVD. A good shop that does a DV transfer will also transfer a copy onto VHS for you as part of the package, if you need a copy for family that is not current on video technology. Also, make sure that you will be getting all of your film back.
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Andrew in Austin
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[Ryan Wright]

You want to get it transfered to Digital Video (DV).

I was just about to say the same thing. I just finished transferring some old movies from VHS to DV. On my last day of school, I "borrowed" (

) my parents video camera for the day to make some tapes of my buddies. This was one of those full size cameras that takes a standard VHS tape. Huge camera, and it cost them a fortune. They would have not been thrilled to find out that I'd snuck it out of the house, but luckily I snuck it back in one piece later that night.
Anyway, I watched the tapes again earlier this year and chunks of the data were just missing. 5 to 10 second spots every once in awhile were just static, from where the tape had degraded. I borrowed my buddy's DV camera, bought some tapes, and copied everything to DV. Should be good for another 10 to 15 years at least. Eventually I'll buy my own DV camera and transfer them to DVD.
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-Ryan (http://www.ryanwright.com )
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