Best Way to Transfer old 8mm film to DVD

[shortyjaay]

I am trying to convert old 8mm or maybe it is 16mm film (havent seen it yet) onto a DVD. I mean i am talking the old stuff before sound was recorded. I know i will have access to a projector and dont know if i can capture it with a DV-camcorder or if there is somewhere i can have it done that is not really expensive. Either way any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[troyvcd1]

do a search. This topic has been discussed heavily before.

[MYoung]

Here's what I do...

Get the 8mm film telecined and transferred to MiniDV.

Get a MiniDv camcorder with Firewire output.

Get a Firewire card for your computer (unless it already has Firewire inputs).

Search for WinDV and the Panasonic DV codecs. Install both.

Capture the telecined film to you computer via Firewire link with your camcorder.

Re-encode the captured footage using the Huff YUV codec.

Once the footage is encoded as YUV you can then do inverse-telecine using the Telecide filter in AVISynth on the footage to get the progressive frames back.

Once you have progressive frames back then edit the footage preserving the 23.976 fps frame rate.

Encode the edited footage to MPEG as progressive video.

Author to DVD.

Kick back, have a beer, and say God is great.

[fmctm1sw]

I rememebr discussing this a while back too. You may be able to project it onto a screen and just videotape it with your camcorder. I think there are other ways to do it as well.

[MYoung]

True, you could just tape it on a camcorder, but a telecine would yield better results. I doubt that it's feasible to recover progressive frames from film that is taped on a camcorder. If you are really serious about transferring the film well, you'll want those progressive frames back.

If you go with a telecine, try a search for "telecine" and "minidv". You should be able to find a place that will transfer it for you.