Question about ripping home movies dvd

[steve84]

I am trying to choose a company to transfer our 30 year old and older home movies to dvd. From what I have been told and read if they digitally transfer them the quality will be better then transferring to vhs first. I found a guy locally in the detroit area who will transfer everything directly to DVD but there will not be and chapter or menu choices on the dvd which leads to my question:

If I get the movies put on DVDs how hard would it be for me to get those movies off the dvds and back on my computer so I can edit them
myself and then burn new dvds with chapters? Is it hard to get the video off of a dvd?

I am trying to find somebody locally because I wouldn't be thrilled mailing 50 years of memories out of state to potentially get lost somewhere.
There are a ton of online companies but I have no way of knowing who to trust

Thanks for any help. This is all driving me nuts.

Steve

[Gees]

No, it's not hard to get the video back off the DVD to work with it. It's the same process as "ripping" that's explained in detail right on this site. And lots of people can advise you when you get to that point.

home movies

You didn't say what theses movies are on at present.

[lordsmurf]

30 years? Probably 16mm.

[thayne]

It's easy, you just demux the vob files back to mpeg and then re-author. You can then add chapters, menus etc without re-encoding the video.

[thayne]

30 years? Probably 16mm.

I have never seen home movies on 16mm, I bet it's 8mm film

[Gees]

30 years? Probably 16mm.

Ahh, I see. Never had home movies on film, so I wasn't sure.

IF you want to create everything on the DVD yourself, why not have them transfer it to an uncompressed avi.? And place that on DVD disk for you.

[steve84]

Thanks for the info. These movies are in 8mm format. No sound. They are 25-50 years old. I wish I could transfer them myself but I want to makesure they are done in the best quality I can before the film is no good

[Gees]

I want to makesure they are done in the best quality I can before the film is no good

Very good idea. :c) Don't let it make you crazy. It will have been worth the effort, I'm sure.

I agree, try to find a place as local as you can so you can ask to see results and samples of their work. I'd choose that option way before price even.

Good luck.
:c)

[FOO]

Doing that is the reason I got into this hobby.

Lots of them INSIST on putting them on VHS.
I think some of them do the Camcorder on the wall routine
I know that some of them put it on VHS and then
copy that to a DVD. Yes folks it's true.

I finally got tired of either lies or extreme prices and had a mom & pop
shop locally do it. Just so I could go see myself. They put it raw on a
DV tape. I have neighbor who has a DV tape reader so I got away with it.

If I was to do it again I would do it myself.