Another film transfer service... with some questionable advice
film-to-video.com
I ran across these guys when looking around for 8mm film transfers. Some choice quotes, but this one sticks out. "writable DVDs have a shelf life of only 2 to 5 years" Further on in the site, they proclaim MiniDV is the archival media of choice! YIKES! Ironically, MiniDV is the one format I have seen tapes start to degrade in as little as 5 years. I'm sure the quality of their service is good, but the sales pitch could use some work. FWIW, I will have some more to add to this section of the site. My parents had a ton of 8mm film transferred to DVD a few years ago. Needless to say, it could have been done a little better. |
Yeah, that's one of those sites where it's harder to find correct information than it is to find myths and inaccuracies. Pretty much everything written there is a skewing of facts and agreed-upon consensus in the professional community. This is what happens when somebody who apparently does not understand video (or the related topic of optical media) writes down information that was likely gleamed from heresay and non-authoritative sources.
The 'Who We Are' page shows a lineage of education that would preclude any knowledge on media -- video or otherwise. Working for a TV station at some point in the past also doesn't prove command of the subject matter -- he could have been a janitor, for all we know. (And based on the odd information you see written there, floor mopping is more believable than anything that dealt with video content.) And what's with the huge photo on the homepage, and smaller photos of himself all over the site? Narcissism, much? You find many generalities on the site. For example, the statement that they only "hire some of the best people in the world." As supposed to what? Hiring the worst ones? Doesn't every boss strive to hire the best people? Do all of them have his same self-proclaimed lack of formal education in the subject? Is that what "best" means? I'll agree that a degree doesn't equate to skill or knowledge, but video isn't an easy topic and formal education helps. Pay close attention how the homepage has slowly filled itself with backpeddling statements, while still attempting to rigidly adhere to ridiculous claims. For example, stating how they are not anti-DVD, yet still believe DVDs only have a lifespan of 2-5 years. Really? (Like that new MS phone commercial: "REALLY?!") Let's focus on that 'Dirty Little Secrets' page... NOTE: I'm not linking to his crap, so you'll have to copy/paste the URL if you want to read the original version. Code:
http://www.film-to-video.com/dirty_little_secrets.html Quote:
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There is where you run into something obvious -- professionals do this daily, yet this guy thinks the video will turn into blocky, noisy videos? No, I don't think so. Quote:
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I would add, however, that most film optics were so lousy that VHS can more than adequately capture the fuzzy videos grandma shot of her grandma 50 years ago. If you can resolve at least 352x480 worth of detail, then you're probably doing pretty well. Anybody doubting the quality of early and late non-pro film of the 20th century should simply visit archive.org (home of the U.S. National Archives) and peruse some of their free-to-download conversions. Putting a video into a larger resolution palette won't make it sharper if it was fuzzy to begin with. Anyway... I had already pointed out his baloney 3+ years ago at http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/2...=1#post1676810 And again at http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/3...=1#post1980275 But I guess it needed to be done again. And that's just barely scratching the surface of what all is odd, inaccurate, or just plain wrong on that site. I think that his unreasonable bias for the MiniDV format has allowed him to see non-existent demons and bogeyman in all other formats. Just yesterday I was compiling some media research documents for new articles to appear on this site, and MiniDV did not make it past 10 years on some of the charts. It's a tape -- tapes die easily due to their contact/open nature. You can't avoid that. Sorry. This kind of stuff really just aggravates me. I missed the days when being a writer meant you had to go through some sort of gatekeeper (an editor, fact checker, etc) -- as opposed to mind vomit that makes up blogs and apparently many websites. Anybody can writes whatever they want, right or wrong, and those who don't know any better will sadly give it equal consideration when doing research. To me, that film-to-dvd.com site is about on par with a conspiracy theory kook site. :rolleyes: Just ignore it. |
I've seen a bunch of negative reviews of that place in years past, but I could not find them when I had looked some weeks back, when replying to this thread the first time. While answering another film-to-DVD question today, I found one of them:
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Generally what I've read is negatives on quality being less than the "sparkly version" you get reading all the BS. I used to know two people with video business out of the Santa Fe area, and they had nothing nice to say, either. (Quoting their own clients, maybe?) I wonder if I can track them down and get some quotes. Hmmm.... |
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