http://americal.com/cgi-bin/smart_cart2.cgi?page=dvdr-play-compatibility.html&cart_id=UNK.NON.8503435_18163.We can transfer your 8mm or 16mm Home Movies to DVD for 10 cents a linear foot (Plus $9.95 for the DVD or $14.95 for the MiniDV videotape). One 3 inch 8mm movie reel (see picture above) is 50 feet of film ($5.00 to capture it). Until further notice the only 8mm film we capture is SILENT regular or Super 8mm film. We still capture 16mm film with or without sound. Each 3 inch Super 8mm reel plays about 3 minutes. Regular 8mm reels play about 3 1/2 minutes. 38 or so of these 3 inch 8mm movie reels (about 1900 feet) will fill up a 2 hour DVD. We use the 1 hour MiniDV video tapes if you want a sharp, full resolution original master right off the computer. We splice your film if it is broken and temporarily add leader if needed so the whole reel gets captured. We project the film (while keeping lint off the lens) onto a very flat and white surface while capturing it through a firewire connected digital camcorder into a computer. No, we do NOT use one of those worthless film transfer boxes that make the picture grainy and washed out with a strobe light effect. We do NOT use a telecine projector but the film IS projected at a frame rate that matches the NTSC (American) TV refresh rate so there is no strobe effect. Your old home movies will still have the look of film. There is no "Setup Fee" because we are always set up for film and we work on film every day. We capture film in a digital format at 30 frames per second (60 fields) in a full 720 X 480 pixels at over 500 lines of resolution. As we project the film we continually adjust the lighting. Dark areas get lightened up and light areas get toned down so whatever is on the film may be potentially viewed better. Rewinding and re-projecting is often necessary to insure the lighting, focus and framing is correct. After the film is captured into our computer we then edit out the leader and most of the completely dark or white frames. We record the high resolution edited footage to either MiniDV videotape or DVD or both. A master on MiniDV preserves the movies in the best resolution possible (except for .avi files on a hard drive) even though DVD is a much more common playback medium. MiniDV video tape is a magnetically recorded medium and is subject to loss over time (20 - 30 years). Also, one common camcorder mishap in your MiniDV Camera can result in a MiniDV video tape being eaten and destroyed. We record to DVD in high quality MPEG 2 format. We strongly suggest making backup copies of your DVDs to archive in safe storage. Some people in the Film Transfer Industry say DVDs don't last after 2 - 5 years but we preserved our own family's movie reels onto DVD back in December of 2000 and they all still look, play and sound GREAT! These DVDs are easily viewed with any good quality home entertainment type DVD player and all computer DVD players/recorders. A few cheap DVD player models won't play laser burned DVD-R. See an old list of compatable DVD players at:
If your film was shot out of focus (often while zooming in while shooting Super 8mm movies) there is nothing that we can do to fix that. We can edit out (for free) any and all totally out of focus shots upon request. We continually check the focus of our equipment to insure it is at its best for every reel. Some reels play with the picture upside down. Unless it was shot that way on purpose we can use our computer to turn them right side up for $3 per 3 inch reel. Some film was shot sideways. We can fix that on our computer but you would end up with a tiny picture with big, black bands on each side. The cost for this service is outrageous. If you're not sure exactly what order to have your film reels play back in we can build you a "Working DVD". The way this works is you first mark your reels with numbers in no particular order. After we capture them into our computer we will place the reel number (viewable on TV) before each reel for 5 seconds. We leave a 5 second gap of black between each numbered reel also. As you watch your "Working DVD" as many times as needed you can then take notes and decide which reel ought to be first, second, third, etc. We do NOT charge to put the numbers/gaps in nor to take the numbers/gaps out afterwards. We do NOT charge to move the reels into the correct order because it is as easy as moving cards around on a table top (on the computer). The only extra charge would be the new correct, master DVD at $9.95. We can add music (you send it and we return it) at $3 per song (songs lasting 5 minutes or less). We can divide your DVD into different chapters with titled "Menu Buttons" for only $4 each. Each chapter title can be up to 23 character/spaces. We build Pinnacle .avi data files from the original high resolution digitally captured footage every time we work on the movie footage. For those who want to edit their own movies, we can transfer these .avi files to DATA DVDs. We're talking about Pinnacle .avi files from the good old days (5 -7 years ago) when Pinnacle capture cards worked superbly. These Pinnacle .avi files are usable in most computers. The correct codec(s) (compression-decompression) are usually already installed. The free downloaded version of Quicktime, once installed, most always provides all the codec(s) needed. It takes about 4 times as much room on a DATA DVD to store .avi data files because they are not compressed but are much larger than the MPEG 2 files on a regular watchable VIDEO DVD. Uncompressed, full resolution (720X480) .avi video files run about 1 gigabyte per 5 minutes of playback time or 13 gigabytes per hour of playback time. We can also copy your Pinnacle .avi files to a portable hard drive if you provide the hard drive. We also can build Pinnacle .mp2 (MPEG2) files from the default original Pinnacle .avi files for $3 per 3 inch reel. As mentioned above, these files are compressed to about a quarter the file size as .avi files, so, MP2 files don't use up as much room on a DATA DVD. A word to the wise, always keep hard drives very cool when running for an extended, dependable hard drive life. A hard drive that gets hot to the touch is soon to die. All this takes about 3 - 4 weeks time depending on the amount of film you send. Some people just send one reel to see if we do a good job. After they see just how nicely their movies play on DVD or MiniDV, they ALL send the whole box to have them transferred! Click Here to go to the Movie Film Order Form. Questions? Call (801) 226-2986 or E-mail us
