Putting your Movies on the Web by Mark Shapiro

When I say movies, I mean film. Many of us, or our parents or grand parents have boxes and boxes of old Super8 or 8mm movie film hidden away in garages and closets and attics. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to put these old movies and images up on the web for sharing among families, friends and relatives?

 You first need to convert the film to a digital file that your computer that can recognize and edit. Once you have the film edited,  you’ll need to convert it to a streaming format and upload it to the web.

 The first step, converting film to digital, is probably the most difficult. You could set up a projector and screen, and simply use a camcorder to shoot and capture the images. That will work – sort of. There are many problems you may experience.

 Lining up the projector and camcorder is not easy. You don’t want the image key-stoning – shooting at an angle to that one side is smaller than the other. That is ugly. Also, you camcorder may not be able to handle large shift sin contrast that film can.  Your dark scenes may end up looking to muddy; your bight scenes may end up over-exposed.

 What if the film is very old and is falling apart? You may find the sprocket holes are ripped and broken and the projector won’t run it. Even worse, fragile old filmstrips often break inside the projector and end up creating the classic film melting effect.

 You could buy a film-chain or telecine – a special device that is built optimized for converting film to video. However, these are expensive and take up a lot of space.

 The easiest way is to pay someone else to do it for you. There are a bunch of companies that can digitize film. Some output it to digital tape; some output it to DVD, and some offer a wide selection of various services. I did a short online survey and found YesVideo. Based in San Jose, they offer reliable services at an affordable price with a good finished DVD product.

 The first step is getting the film to them. They made it easy as they have entered into partnerships with a several national retailers like Walgreens and CVS. You might also find a local smaller photo store that can offer this YesVideo service as well. Go to theYesVideo web site and use their store locator to find a spot near you.

 Before you lug your film reels down there, you should take a few moments and number them in the order you want to see them on the DVDs. The YesVideo technicians will then follow the numbers when they transfer them to the DVDs. You could organize them by chronology, subject matter, whatever. When you bring them into the retail outlet, the photo clerk will pack them all up and then ship them to the YesVideo plant in San Jose.

 The price is reasonable – the first 250 feet will run you about $49.95. Each additional foot will cost a dime. Small reels of 8mm and Super8 film are about 50 feet each.

 During the filling out the form process, you also can pick out various music selections that YesVideo will dub onto the DVDs as an audio track for your DVD.

 Once the film gets to YesVideo, the technicians carefully bar code each and every reel to make sure that your precious memories won’t get lost. The film is then removed from the small reels and threaded onto larger reels. During this process, YesVideo will repair breaks and clean the film a bit. The next step is the actual digital transfer where they use a battery of projectors aimed into video cameras. The film images are digitized and then sent to the DVD burning room where the footage runs through some quality control and image processing hardware and then is burnt onto the DVD, complete with menu icons.

 As part of this transfer process, your selected soundtracks also get burned onto the DVD, underneath your silent film footage.

 In addition to seeing your films on the DVD, YesVideo also creates three short “music videos” onto each DVD. Their proprietary software picks out what it considers the best shots and then creates a short montage collection, cut to your selected music. When the DVD is all done, it is packed up and then shipped back to the retailer where you placed your order.

 The next step in the putting your film on the web process is to get the video off the DVD and into your video editing program. You’ll need to convert the DVD’s VOB file st something your computer and editing software canworkwith, like AVI or MPEG files.

 If you do a web search on converting DVD VOB files to MPEG or AVI, you’ll find lots of choices. Recommend shareware products include AVS Video Converter, Hero Video Convert, and FlexImage DVD to AVI.  I downloaded and used DVD to VCD SVCD AVI Converter    to convert the DVD’s VOB files to AVI.    

 Once you have the files in an AVI format, it is time to open up your favorite video editing and get to work. By the way – some video editing programs are finicky about what kinds of AVI files they will accept. For example, Pinnacle Studio 9 only likes Type 2 AVI files, not Type 1.

 As the background music that YesVideo supplied might not be the most appropriate for your finished project, you may prefer to strip it out and replace it with your own. Another good idea is to add your own narration that explains the who, what and where of these classic film sequences.

 Once you have edited the digital version of your film, added effects, voice-over, credits, etc., the final step is to use your video editing software’s export or save functions to output your finished video as a streaming format and then to post it to the appropriate site on the web. Of course, you can also use pro compression programs like Canopus ProCoder or Discreet’s cleaner for Mac or Windows.

Links:

YesVideo