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Old 11-03-2006, 12:36 PM   #1
mykalberta
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Default Converting 8mm Reels to Digital

Well Christmas is fast approaching and I have decided to do something a bit different for my dad this year.

I am going to convert his BetaMax and 8mm films to Digital. He is a big video camera nut and has videos of everything. I just covertly brought the BetaMax box to my place and he has 146 tapes - ok well maybe it wont all be dont by Christmass.

BetaMax is easy enough to convert to digital, output from Beta player to input on video card.

The 8mm is where I am stuck. There are companies who will convert the 8mm to a DVD or VHS but I was wanting to do this myself (he has 214 reels and at the lowest quoted price of $45 - its a smidge expensive plus they dont do any editing just straight conversion).

Has anyone here ever tried it, are there units you can buy to convert them somehow?

Also if I can get something like this then maybe he can do it in his spare time, I know he wants to add voice over to those and it would be alot easier to store them as DVD and pop them in a player rather than drag the ole projector out every time.

I also worry about those reels degrading as most of the time they are stored in the bastement cold room.

Any assistance with this would be much appreciated.

Thanks

MYK
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Old 11-03-2006, 12:40 PM   #2
Clarkey
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That's a lot of tapes.

My uncle has a bunch of 8mm reels (no sound). He wants to convert them to digital too.

I haven't really looked into it but the best way I could think of was to project the 8mm on a screen and film it with your digital camcorder. There would be a slight loss in quality but I think it would work.
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Old 11-03-2006, 12:43 PM   #3
sec304
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Clarkey View Post
That's a lot of tapes.

My uncle has a bunch of 8mm reels (no sound). He wants to convert them to digital too.

I haven't really looked into it but the best way I could think of was to project the 8mm on a screen and film it with your digital camcorder. There would be a slight loss in quality but I think it would work.
That's what I was going to mention as well... it's about your only option
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Old 11-03-2006, 12:49 PM   #4
ken0042
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sec304 View Post
That's what I was going to mention as well... it's about your only option
There is a device that is used to take films and output them to a regular RCA output. Otherwise TV stations in the 50's would not have been able to broadcast movies the way they did.

I don't know of anybody personally who owns one; but they are expensive.
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Old 11-03-2006, 01:01 PM   #5
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That's what I was going to mention as well... it's about your only option
Here's some tips on making a good transfer.

http://www.doceo.com/new%20articles/filmtoDV.html
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Old 11-03-2006, 01:27 PM   #6
mykalberta
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Thanks for all the responses.

I was hoping not to have to do it that way, but that website is quite a bit better than the one I was looking at.

http://www.doceo.com/new%20articles/filmtoDV.html

I have done about 54 of the Beta tapes already, talk about a pain in the ass. Its a good think I have 1.4 Tb of space on my computer - unfortunately about 1/3 of it is taken up with porn

He is getting pretty close to the goverment retirement age and he has alot of interests - creating a plain language historical conversion of the KJB, all this video stuff, converting all the photographs he has to digital, family geneology.

I went through an 8mm one yesterday that was of the one trip to the Columbia Ice Fields when I was 2-3 could kind of walk - its unfortunate I slept through the whole thing, damn comfortable seats.

Thanks

MYK
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