Convert old 8mm film to DVD?

[ironguy]

Wow. First post! :D

Anyone know how, or a good place to go, to get old 8 mm film put on DVD?

I have about 40 reels of film that need to be converted. Also, what type of quality can I expect?

Lastly, am I going to have to sell my car to pay for this?

[Philip Colmer]

ironguy,

Your profile doesn't say where you are, so I can't help with the "good place to go" part of your question.

However, there are a few ways of getting 8mm film transferred, in increasing order of quality: Set up a projector, play the film on a screen & video the screen. Then use whatever process you would normally use to transfer your video onto DVD.
Get an adapter that connects the projector directly to the camcorder, so bypassing the screen part of the stage.
Get someone to do it professionally :) I got four films done like this last year using a local guy who does all sorts of video conversions. I asked him to put the final video onto DV tape because I wanted to edit it. The results are pretty good but one thing you have to realise is that the 8mm frame rate is different from video's frame rate. The best transfer method will mix overlapping frames so that enough are generated for the video. The cost wasn't too high, but I don't know if you can find someone locally to you.If you don't have a video editing system, the first two suggestions probably aren't too helpful unless you've got a DVD writer.

If you live in the UK, I might be able to help you out - it depends on how much editing of the film you wanted done.

--Philip

[Philip Colmer]

If you live in the US, there is a company advertising through Google on this site that may be able to help you. I cannot vouch for them in any shape or form, but their web site is www.denevi.com. They say that they can transfer 8mm onto DVD.

I would tell you to click on the ad so that Jason gets some revenue, but Google rotate the ads they show, so you might be refreshing quite a bit just to get them. I did click on the ad myself in order to look at their details, so hopefully that will count :)

--Philip

[Jason Dunn]

Philip is correct - this is the only method I'm aware of to transfer video like that.

[Suhit Gupta]

To continue on Philip's train of thoughts, in case www.denevi.com or any other of our sponsors doesn't pan out, a Google search for "convert 8mm to DVD" seems to return a lot of results. Pricing appears to be under A$35 in case you are in Sydney, Australia (since we are still trying to guess where you are from ironguy ;-)).

Suhit

[famousdavis]

Set up a projector, play the film on a screen & video the screen. Then use whatever process you would normally use to transfer your video onto DVD.

I've done this, albeit I recorded from film to 8mm analog tape. Still, the results were quite good! I'm hoping to record my father-in-law's old film library into a digital format as soon as I settle on a new digital camcorder.