Topic: Super 8 to DVD

[Clive]

Does anyone know of a company which will transfer Super 8 film onto DVD?

[Sandra]

You are showing your age now Clive  
I remember seeing a lot of companies back in the late 1980s advertising super 8 to video tape but havent seen any for those for ages or any for dvd.
If there arent any doing it now you will probably have to do as they did then and record the film from the projected image onto either an ordinary or digital video camera and then transfer to VCD or DVD via your pc.
If you go via this route keep the projected image as small as possible to improve the quality  

[Clive]

Thanks Sandra.  This is the problem when formats keep changing all the time.  I still have a large collection of phonograph cylinders which I bought in 1902 and the horn is starting to wear out.  One day I'll transfer those to DVD too.  

[Simon]

I still have a large collection of phonograph cylinders which I bought in 1902 and the horn is starting to wear out.  One day I'll transfer those to DVD too.  

Clive, I wish you'd stop going on about being in your twenties!!    

[Clive]

I was in my prime at the turn of the 20th Century I'll have you know.  Young whippersnapper!  

[Sandra]

If you do try recording it yourself Clive you'll have to synchronise the frame rate or else you will get a rolling image scrolling up or down the screen as those old films used to show on TV sets in the background  

[Clive]

I have found a company that will do this.  It's the Widescreen Centre in London although transfer to DVD is quite expensive and will exceed £100.

[Sandra]

Is that per so many feet Clive or per dvd?
I must have hundreds of feet of super 8,some silent and some with sound  

[Simon]

I presume the silent ones are from your teens, Sandra?    :heehee:

[Clive]

They have to convert it to VHS first and they charge £39.50 for the first 100 ft and £7.50 per 100 ft thereafter.  It then costs £39.50 per 30 minutes to transfer to DVD.

[Sandra]

I presume the silent ones are from your teens,

I dont thing Super 8 was invented then Simon  

For those younger than Clive and myself,Super 8 was a revolution in home movies when it came out as it was nice and compact and the unused film came as a small sealed cartridge containing 50 feet of film.This lasted for a whole 3 amd a half minutes,(or was it 4 and a half)I think  
The silent ones were a little expensive and you had to be careful not to waste it and try to edit as you went rather than shoot loads of stuff and edit it later because of the cost of the film and developing.The later sound super 8 was prohibitively expensive ( well it was for me   )but I still managed to get a few reels of one of the Farnborough air shows in the mid 70s complete with sound  

That does sound a little on the dear side to me Clive.I think I will be attempting to dig my projector and films out one day and see if its feasible to copy with a digital cam corder and then to VCD via the PC as it will not lose much more quality than recording to vhs first and then to disc  

[Sandra]

One way to cut the cost while keeping the quality Clive as opposed to trying it yourself would be to get the films transferred to VHS by " The Professionals".
There may even be more firms to choose from who still offer this service and would therefore be in competition with each other.
Then once you have the films on VHS its a simple matter,providing you have a TV in card,to copy them to your hard drive and then write to VCD yourself or even do it "On the fly".
This option would at least halve the published costs.
Even if you have to buy a card with TV in to do it with,you would end up with an extra bit of equipment which you could easily justify the expense of to Mrs. Clive  

[Clive]

That's a very good idea Sandra.  I've just learned that this exercise has nothing whatsoever to do with me after all.    It's for my brother-in-law who lives in Oxford.  Apparently we had our super 8's transferred to VHS years ago.    Even more scary is that I watched them a few months ago.  What a short memory I have developed.