Converting 8mm Reels to Digital

[mykalberta]

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

[Clarkey]

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.

[sec304]

Originally Posted by Clarkey

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

[ken0042]

Originally Posted by sec304

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.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by sec304

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

[mykalberta]

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