Hi Walter, I'm glad to hear that everything worked well . Can you report what your family thought of it? Also, my father has some old 8 mm film from the late 70's which need to be transferred. Where did you go to get this done and what was the approximate cost?

Thanks,

Jim Q9300 2.5 GHz
4 GB Ram
Nvidia 9800 GT

The family loved everything. I had a lot of funny stuff in the DVD's. There was this video of my cousin from 1973 doing this little shaking dance thing in the snow. It only lasted two seconds but I made a seemless loop of it and ran it for two minutes with effects and rap music. I even filmed myself doing the same dance infront of a green screen and then used a Chroma key and made myself a PIP object that floated up from the bottom of the screen and danced with him for a bit (then slid back down). Everyone made me rewind that 3 times.

The funny thing is, PD7 makes me look a lot smarter than I am "it's magic!"

Here's War and Peace on film transfer:

-You can do it yourself, but it's a pain. You need a variable speed projector to start with. I've seen good results though but without a mirror box you'll have an angle
-Each reel says "25ft" on the box, but they are like double reels that are really 50ft
-50ft of film has about 15 minutes of video
-Every transfer service has a fee per foot which is always between 8 cents and 20 cents per foot
-MOST places charge a setup fee of like $20-$30
-MOST places charge that setup for every stupid reel
-SOME places charge you to splice the reels into 400ft reels
-Most places will send you burned DVD's by default. In most cases you need to remember to ask for DATA DVD's so you have a higher quality version of the capture.
-SOME services can color correct but it's expensive. Mostly the price per foot goes up and a lot of extra fees get added.

In the end I went with this company. As far as I know it's one guy that's been doing this for a long time and his name is Chris I believe:
http://www.wood-land.com/

I forgot the name of the machine he uses. It's like 20 years old and hasn't been made in years, but used ones still go for $100,000. Basically it runs the film through an opening where a light is on one side and a camera records the film as it goes by.

The only negative at all was that in parts of the film (even though he cleaned it before hand) a piece of lint or something would catch on the opening the film passes through and stick for several seconds at times. That didn't happen very often at all though. It's the same kind of thing you can see from a home projector.

He charged me a single setup fee of like $20 or $30 (can't remember) and he will only do it by splicing your 50ft reels onto 400ft reels. In the end, I believe I had over 3500ft of film transfered. It came out to be right at 3 hours of usable footage and I was charged $280.

There was no color correction and I did see tiny piece of lint or dust (like a thread or gob) stick in the picture for a tiny bit from time to time, but otherwise the service was perfect and I was very happy. From calling around it felt like I got an excellent deal price-wise. He send me DATA DVD's per request that were un-compressd MOV files. The three hours of footage was split into six different DUAL-LAYER DVD's. The total size of all disks was 42.9GB. I just checked and the total time of the files is 3 hours and 16 minutes.

I had the film mailed back to me with the disks about 6 business days after I mailed the box to them. I also called him a couple of times to check on how it was going and he was very friendly on the phone. He did take his time explaining things to me. Before I sent the film I told him what I had and he just spouted off how much film it was going to be roughly and what it was going to cost. When he was done that $280 price I was charged was $50 under his quote.

It was a pretty perfect experience. That's the only time I've ever had filmed transfered in my life so I have no comparison basis, but I'd recommend that guy highley. I was very pleased with the whole thing.

Thanks for the update! Your family is going to have high expectations of you for now on. For fun you could post a small segment of that on youtube.

I also think you got a good deal on your film transfer. My father tried to do it himself but he could not get all the stutter out. My guess is that the cost will go up over time.

Jim Q9300 2.5 GHz
4 GB Ram
Nvidia 9800 GT

I'm glad you were able to finish your product so your family could enjoy it! It's nice to have them sit down and watch a family movie instead of running screaming from the room begging "Please, don't make me watch another boring home movie!" I have used Cyberlink products for years and wouldn't use any other. There have been times when it has been a little buggy but if you keep at it you can figure it out, if not, the friendly folks on this forum (like James & Walker) are always glad to help. I hope everyone had a wonderful Holiday and that Power Director will help them to relive those great moments on video!

Thanks, grumpysister.

One thing I learned this month is that to do green-screen work (I bought a large cloth), you need proper lighting to get rid of shadows. I ended up in the garage pulling out two halogen work laps and bouncing them off white board from two different angles to try and get rid of any shadows. I barely got rid of just enough for the Chroma key to work right. But (dude!) getting some film of yourself and being able to pop up into a video for a little bit as a PIP track is just amazing. That was really fun to play with.

Yeah James, getting the stutter out is the problem I read. I didn't have a variable speed projector which you have to have just to get started. Apparently matching the shutter speed of your recording camera with the frame rate of the 8mm film can be a real annoying thing to deal with. I did spend $250 a year ago on Canopus external capture device for VHS and HI-8. That thing worked like a champ. I'm so glad I got my new camcorder and I'm dealing only with files now instead of disk or tape media.

Youtube sample... I may do that but maybe only for a couple of days and take it down. The best work I did is way to family personal, even with documents involved like marriage license scans (and full names and such).