Video Conversion Experts

To a certain degree, yes, your 8mm film to DVD transfer can look as good as your film. Most people are unaware that positive 8mm film (the film type you got back from Kodak when you sent it in for processing) was never intended for transfer to video. It was only intended for viewing on a projector. Negative 8mm film was intended for transfer to video. When negative 8mm film is transferred, it is possible to capture all the highlights and lowlights in the video. However, when positive film is transferred to video, you cannot reproduce the same degree of lowlights and highlights that are present on the film.

There are a few things you can do to get the best 8mm film to DVD transfer possible. The first is to scan the film at 1080 lines (HD video resolution). The 8mm film has around 800 to 1000 lines and scanning the film at 1080 lines will at least get all the details from the film. Second, make sure that the 8mm film transfer process includes color and exposure restoration. As the old movie 8mm film sits on your shelf, the color shift (usually toward blue) and the exposure gets darker.

Scanning your film at HD resolution and using a film restoration machine is the best way to get a 8mm film to DVD transfer that is as close to the original film as possible.

Yes, you can convert your 8mm film to DVD. The important thing is to understand what’s available, how much it cost and what kind of quality you are going to get compared to companies that professional transfer 8mm film to DVD.

Option #1. Transfer your 8mm film to DVD yourself with your projector and a camcorder. The first thing to consider is that your old movie film was recorded at 16 or 18 frames per second (fps). Camcorders in North American record at 29.97 fps. So, you can see that your camcorder will be capturing some film frames more than once and sometimes will capture the film just as it is switching to the next frame. This difference in frame rates causing a flickering affect. Meaning, as you watch the video, you’ll see this pulsating light. This is caused by the film and camcorder running at different frame rates. In order to mitigate this, you might try running your projector at 20fps. This frame rate is more in sync with your camcorder and may eliminate some or all of the flickering.

Option #2. Transfer your 8mm film to DVD by getting a Elmo Transvideo telecine projector or a Goko telcine projector. You might be able to find one on Ebay for around $1000 to 1500. Run the film and take the output in to a DVD recorder. This eliminates most if not all of the flicker issue.

Option #3. Find the best 8mm film to DVD transfer company to do it for you. There are a number of companies doing film transfers. Learn about the basics and the different types of 8mm film transfers.

Several things have changed in the past 10 years. Media (Video Tape, DVD, Blu-Ray) and film transfer technology (Frame by Frame, Film Scanners) have gotten much better. In addition, the ability to view the footage on a high resolution (HDTV) has gotten much better as well.

VHS has 240 lines of resolution, DVD 480 and Blu-Ray 1080 lines. Film transfer machines when from 240 lines to 480 to 1080. TVs have gone from around 300 lines to 500 and now at 1080.

Film transfer to VHS 10 years ago would have been a 240 lines process, put on a 240 line VHS tape and watched on a 300 lines TV.

Today, we can do a film transfer at 1080 lines, to a format like Blu-Ray which is 1080 lines which would be viewed on a 1080 lines HDTV.

A high definition film transfer today can look about 75% better than a film transfer to VHS did 10 years ago.

So, to answer the question, yes, a film transfer today can look significantly better than a film transfer 10 years ago to VHS. See what our film transfer customers are saying.

To understand why a 8mm film to DVD transfer doesn’t look good on a HDTV, lets looks look at a few aspects involved. The final 8mm film to DVD quality will be a product of the resolution of the film itself, the 8mm film to DVD transfer process used and the type of media that the film was transferred do.

A common 8mm film to DVD question we get is, “how good will my 8mm film to DVD transfer look on my HDTV?”. There are a couple of aspects to consider including the resolution of the film itself, the 8mm film to DVD transfer process used and the type of media that the film was transferred do.

8mm film has around 800 to 1000 lines of resolution. A high definition 8mm film to DVD transfer has 1080 lines of resolution. Blu-Ray DVD has 1080 lines of resolution. DVD has 480 lines of resolution.

If you want to maximize the quality of the video of your film on your TV, you want the highest resolution 8mm film to DVD transfer process (like a high definition film transfer). You then want that video placed on the highest resolution media like Blu-Ray DVD. By playing the Blu-Ray DVD on a HDTV, you maintain the highest possible resolution of your film.

What if you don’t have a Blu-Ray player?  You can still get pretty good quality by doing a high definition 8mm film to DVD film transfer process but getting the video put on DVD instead of Blu-Ray. You would loose about 15% of the quality as the high definition video is down converted to DVD.