We were recently contacted to simply transfer 79 films to DVD. The client was celebrating her father’s 80th birthday, and what better way than to watch their old movies on DVD? Here are a few tips to navigate the transfer process to get you the best possible memento.
The problem with direct transfer
Seventy nine film reels is a lot of footage. It wound up being approximately 13 hours. That’s a lot to digest. If you hand someone a stack of 10 DVDs and say, “Here it is. Your life in movies. Have fun watching,” what are the odds they will watch the whole thing? What are the odds you’ll have any interest in watching it? It doesn’t tell a story.
Most direct transfer services will simply put the movies on a DVD. If the reels were not labelled, they will not label the files on the disc. They may or may not include music. If the music is legally licensed it may or may not sound like elevator music. If it’s from someone’s personal CD collection, it is not legal to share on the web or in venues like catering halls.
Many direct transfer services will not color correct the film. As you can see in the image above, the film had yellowed due to poor storage. Here’s what we were able to do with the film reel footage by adding a simple color correction. It’s subtle but makes a big difference in the final movie.
The other major difference with getting something put directly on a DVD is that you cannot then easily edit the footage down to a manageable length. You can purchase programs which will allow you to rip the film files off of the DVD and edit them, but it will not be of the original quality, and it’s not simple to do. Think about it this way, each hour of footage is approximately 13GB of data when captured in standard definition. If your transfer services squashes 2 hours onto one DVD, then they compressed 26GB of data down to 4GB. It’s not going to be all that great when you try to edit it.
The solution
The best bet is to transfer your film to a hard drive, in addition to ordering DVDs. This way you can edit it down to an entertaining length, something like 30 minutes, or even a series of 30 minute movies presented on one DVD.
Here’s an example of what you can do with your footage, given the opportunity. For our Detroit readers, make sure you watch to the end of this 35 second clip to see a favorite vacation destination from years gone by.
In this case, our client ordered a hard drive as well as her DVDs. She happened to be a whiz at iMovie so she completed an edited movie with the footage in time for her Dad’s birthday. She also provided us with very well labelled reels. We were able to group them on the DVDs by subject matter so that the discs themselves told a story. Each DVD menu showed clips from the movies on that disc. For instance, one disc contained only Christmas footage from throughout the years. Another contained only Yellowstone vacations.
If you do get your videos or film reels transferred directly to a DVD, try to have them labelled very clearly. Specify the order in which you’d like them on the DVD. Try to have them grouped and labelled on DVDs by subject. This will make them much more interesting to watch. Enjoy your memories!
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