8 or 16 mm film to dvd questions

[illyad]

I am in the process of taking 8 (or 16) mm film from old family movies and placing them on dvd. Can anyone please give me some good advie on how to do this? I have a dvd burner hooked up to my computer and I have some experience in copying dvds. Any advice would be appreciated.

[Blazey]

Tough one! You will need a few things. First is a camcorder with DVI out, second is a DVI in on your PC. Thirdly is a good NLE like Vegas. Most importantly is a projector capable of the task. I can't help with the 8mm, but for the 16mm it will need to be a Telecine machine equiped with a 5 blade shutter. Anything else will produce a flicker when transferred that will make you nautious! You need to adjust the porjector's speed to match the camera because film runs at a different speed than an NTSC or PAL Mpeg file. Project the film on a white sheet and record through the camera to the PC as an AVI file. Edit in your NLE and encode using one of the many guides on the site. It's a BIG job and will cost about $1500 for everything you need. You can probably have it done for you rather inexpensively.

Good luck.

[greymalkin]

theres a lower tech way of doing it if you don't want to spend 1500 dollars.

My dad bought a little box for probably less than a couple hundred dollars that allows you to focus the movie on a little screen located on the side of it and then place a camera at the end to record what the projector is playing..there are lights/mirrors inside the box to redirect the image to your camera. Then you can either capture it via rca/svideo out from your camera or you can "capture" via firewire if you have that capability.

there are filters/etc for virtuadub that will help fill frames and reduce/eliminate the flicker...although you watched it flickering away up until now without any seizures so you may consider it a luxury :P.