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If you grew up in the decades before smartphones, digital photography and full resolution HD cameras that fit in the palm of your hand, chances are you’ve got a dusty box somewhere filled with family memories captured through more arcane means. The box is packed with photo albums, VHS tapes and possibly even 8mm film reels. Not only do you never watch these formats anymore, but it’s also becoming more and more complicated to find the aging technology that allows you to screen them in the first place. Just because your old home movies started in these formats doesn’t mean you should leave them there. Physical tape and film degrades over the passing years, and you really can’t stop the process. You’ve got to get these precious family heirlooms transferred onto the more long-lasting digital formats. Here are five tips for digitizing and preserving your old home movies.
If you have a bit of technological know how you can certainly handle the process yourself. It will cost you far less money, and you’ll be able to see how everything turns out right away. When you send things off to a lab you won’t know how the transfer went until you put the DVD or BluRay into your player. At that point it will be too late to make adjustments, and you will have already paid the bill. So how do you make this happen? The easiest route is to set up that film projector you’ve got stashed away for the last time. Project your old home movie, and then record it off the screen with a modern digital video camera.
While doing this, take the time to prepare for the best results. If you just switch it on and roll the quality of your old home movies could end up being recorded in even worse shape. The tape or film reel has probably degraded a certain amount, and you don’t want to make it worse by recording a fuzzy, distorted image. First of all, set up a tripod for your digital camera. You’ll want it to be as steady as possible, so you can recreate the original recording. You should also take a look at the frame rate. Try to match up the frame rate of your projector and the frame rate of the digital camera, or get as close as you possibly can. That will help avoid an end result that flickers.
Wherever you set things up, make sure you have a monitor in the same room. Ideally you’ll have everything coordinated so you can plug your digital camera right into your television. That way you’ll be able to watch the playback in progress. You’ll see if there are any glitches, or if there’s a reason to make some adjustments. For example, you can play with the digital exposure or the focus to cut down on visible issues. It won’t be perfect, but you can get it close. You might also want to adjust the placement of the camera. Sometimes you can be off just a slight bit on the angle, which causes significant distortion.
If you don’t have the equipment to do this you can have your home movies professionally digitized and preserved. It’s going to cost you, but the results will be a huge step up from what you can do at home. The first option is for the lab to run your home movie through a projector that basically records the film digitally as it plays. It’s a process they’ve got down, and the results are quality. Just make sure you ask for a sample of ten or fifteen seconds of the movie, so you can inspect the work. And only use a company with experience.
The alternative is having your movie digitally photographed one frame at a time. Each frame is then put together to recreate the movie. It’s probably the best of all options. Just make sure you check with a company with a lot of experience in this process, such as Just8MM.com. And ask for both a DVD screener and a professional-grade digital tape as copies to bring home.
