By John Parker


When you were a kid, did you ever ask your parents what they were like when they were a kid? What about your grandparents or their parents? What if you could turn the clock back in time to see how they lived? With a little bit of luck you can. Lots of people have old family movies sitting in their closets or garage and can convert the 8mm film to DVD preserving your family's history for you and future generations to enjoy.

Having your 8mm movie films converted to DVD is really very easy to do and actually quite rewarding. The whole family has enjoyed seeing how my grandparents and their parents lived. Personally I've really enjoyed knowing more about my grandfather who passed away unfortunately before I was born. We've been able to see how they really lived: what their houses were like, how they dressed, what cars they drove, and how the celebrated life and it's special moments.

Viewing these movies gives us the privilege to see members of our family in a previous stage of their lives, in motion. This ability gives us a sense of deeper understanding of them. The whole family has enjoyed watching these videos- it has been very much a video family history.

Interest in family history and genealogy as a whole has grown significantly.The hunt is on for documents and public records of all types such as marriage licenses, birth certificates, immigrations, and old photos to name just a few. Statistic documents such as these leave us to only imagine what our ancestors were really like. What if though, we had a movie of them, in motion, something as simple as a wave hello, or even a smile? Something like that would be a family treasure. For this reason digitizing your 8mm films to DVD is so important for you and future generations.

Unfortunately, film by nature deteriorates. This is a huge problem even in Hollywood where some films have faded very rapidly. Steven Spielburg's Jaws faded badly in just 15 years. Ever since Mr. Spielburg has been one of the great film preservation advocates. Too many golden era Hollywood classics are gone forever. Thankfully many interest groups are dedicating significant talent and capital to preserving and restoring what is still left. Many factors that can affect film's survival rate including the quality of manufacturing, the stability of its dyes, the quality of its processing or development and how it has been stored.

Those of us with home movies, do not have the big budgets to spend to restore our films. We need to focus our efforts on preserving them the best we can by following special storage procedures, and to transfer them to DVD.

You may be wondering where do I start? Or doubting that you have time to figure all this out. Even though I have an HD video editing and photographic background, figuring out the best way to preserve and convert my 8mm film, to my surprise, required hundreds of hours of research - I'm a bit of a perfectionist, I admit. In the end, I researched how 8mm film was manufactured, how it's deteriorating, the various conversion techniques including telecine, aerial, and motion picture film scanners, DVD media types and their respective lifespans, film storage techniques, among other topics. To help you along, and to save you a ton of time (think of it as a quick start guide) I've summarized all my work on my web page all about 8mm to DVD 8mmfilmtodvd.net. The website will explain how to get started today. I hope you enjoy converting your 8mm films to DVD as much as I have.




About the Author:



0 comments

Web site development, PHP programming's Fan Box