Digitize 8mm film

[susan_olivier]

Is there a device that I can plug directly into my computer to copy 8mm film frame by frame into digital format? I want to avoid the

film -> DigitalVideoTape -> DVD,

and do

film -> DVD.

[photojoe]

Where I used to work last year, they had an 8mm projector/camera thing (it wasn't quite a projector or camera, but parts of both.) that would send out a NTSC or PAL video signal from 8mm films(film, like Kodachrome! Not TDK 8mm VIDEO) That signal was fed to a video-in card on a MAC. The mac would capture to the drive and then would be output as MPEG-1 (Mpeg-1?) onto a CD-ROM that was viewable in most DVD players. It wasn't true DVD, but it would play on DVD and if there was no audiotrack on the film then you could get almost 2 hours of film on a CDROM. These things do exist. Keep looking.

[switchedcraigmageephotogra]

that would be a very expensive peice of equipment. i'd imagine youd still need a telecine machine (film to tape) and a computer, and a mpeg 2 compression board to compress more than 5 mins of footage.

there are a few places in the UK that will do cine to dvd but i cant remember any names. But why stratght to dvd?? shurley you'd want to edit your footage if your talking buying equipment. it's probably cheaper to have a company do the film to tape then final edit to dvd for you. unless this is going to be a huge commercial venture. MPEG 2 cards for instance are about £4000. and DVD writer is £3500.

You could buy a new mac 733 as these have dvd writers but apparently they take a long time to compress the footage as they use software compression. It does seem strange as to why you want film straight to DVD?

Give us a clue...!

[bruce_josephs]

There is a better way. DVD Infinity in Sydney Australia can digitise the film for you. We transfer each frame individually using proprietary scanning processes. We can transfer directly to DVD or to miniDV as required. The images are crisp. They are completely filcker free, have richer colour, more detail, more viewable image area and are comparable to Rank transfers without the wobble, and at a fraction of the cost. Save yourself the expense, time and heartache, see <a href="http://www.dvdinfinity.com.au">www.dvdinfinity.com.au</a>

[glen_johnson]

http://www.moviestuff.tv/8mm_telecine.html

[glen_johnson]

Some film scanners will take 16mm film. I don't know if any will go to 8mm or not. 8mm is mighty tiny. If you don't want to shoot it with your own digital video camera, then you could buy one of the Elmo telecine transfer units. You run the film as though you were projecting it. The built in video camera turns it into a vhs output feed. You can then run that feed directly into something like the Phillips 985 DVD recorder. I think you'll get higher quality if you use your own DV camcorder. VHS as a practical matter is considerably less dense, and you can see it on projected images, even on screens as small as 31" diagonal.

[bruce_josephs]

The Elmo will provide flickery juttery results. Of course it is better than most of the other equipment available.

[bruce_josephs]

Of course the Elmo also only transfers at 240 horizontal lines of resolution as well.