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Originally Posted by BubbaLovesTV
Soooooo..... What are you trying to say?
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That the company/website "Video Conversion Experts" are shysters. BS, myth, and misinformation is what they give you. Not truth, not fact, not quality information.
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2) What was included? There seem to be some additional costs at the bottom of their pricing page, like $50/hr prep; $10/reel color correction; etc... Did you have to pay for those too through ebay? Was it included?
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This was a good unanswered question. Perhaps you can now answer it?
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Originally Posted by BubbaLovesTV
They were VERY nice and friendly and seemed to genuinely care and be honest. So I dropped off the film with them.
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Tell them that digitalFAQ.com referred you, if you don't mind.
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I had 1600 feet of film, so the total was around $650 (including a DVD). $17.50 per 50ft reel.
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Given the level of quality (ie wet-gate process), price is fair.
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They send me my Hard Drive back with the transfer, and they kept the original film in case I see problems with the transfer. Once I tell them it's okay, then they'll send me the original film back.
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And it's also more secure to mail back the drive separate from the originals. That way, everything is not lost, should something turn up missing.
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It is expensive when you think about, but hell, you only get one change to get it right.
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Yep!
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It's hard to judge the quality since I'm not sure what the original film looks like. But it's definitely not the HD experience I was expecting. But maybe that was unrealistic of me.
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Yes, it was unrealistic. People have been spoiled by HD.
35mm film is about 4K in theory, but usually 2K in practice. The optics/lenses of the camera had a huge affect on quality, referring specifically to the resolving power. And film was grain, not pixels, so it varied based on ASA/ISO rating. Developer/fix chemicals could also affect grain and sharpness.
8mm is about 1/25th the size of 35mm.
Super8 was not quite double the 8mm size, so still tiny.
16mm was about about 1/6th of 35mm.
Super16 was less than 1/4th the size of 35mm.
HD/1080p is about 50% 2K. So even Super16 is not really HD. In theory, Super16 can be HD, but again, optics and grain meant it never happe.ed
SD/720x480 is about 25% HD/1080, and Super16 and 16mm could be a bit better than a max-resolution DVD or DV tape.
8mm is obviously much lower quality, being so tiny. Most agree that it's "VHS quality" at best (about 250x480, or 300x480 for the Nyquist diehards), but since the vertical resolution is smaller, it's more comparable to a VCD or CIF, at 352x240. Now, if you have high grade film, and flawlessly clean prime lenses on the camera, then it may be double that, around 720x480. Still not HD, but no worse than a DVD. Many agree that 8mm and even Super8 is 640x480, at best.
Of course, there's also something to be said about having the color be 4:4:4 (digital equiv) and progressive. So, for once, you'd see true resolutions, and not the MPEG/analog versions of it. The film, even though SD resolutions, may appear sharper than you're used to seeing.
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The video was noticeably grainy, even though it was 40 years old. And there were frames that had artifacts that were not removed by the wet transfer. So all in all it looks like an old home movie.
On the plus side, there was no flickering and the brightness and contrast was consistent. Though some "segments" were darker then others, so it wasn't adjusted from scene to scene. I've attached some screen shot.
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That's where Avisynth, DaVinco, Premiere,
VirtualDub, and lots of editing time comes in.
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I would be thrilled if someone else could tell me if this was results I should have expected. Thanks!
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That looks like a very nice transfer.
