Suggested Film to DVD Professional Transfer/Conversion Services

[BubbaLovesTV]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

That is NOT a quality company!

They have a lot of myth, misinformation, and outright lies on their site.

For example, their sample images (see attached) are nonsense.
- You can't really convert VHS to HD, much less 4K.
- They purposely made the "lower quality" images dark compared to the others. Brightness levels have nothing to do with resolution or even "pro broadcast" playback.
- The HD/4K image is awful, and they've simply increase sharpness in something like Photoshop, as it has horrible ringing (halos). The chroma noise is terrible on all of them, and means that pro equipment was NOT in use!

The same is true for both their film and analog tape information. It's all nonsense and lies.

If you care about your videos, and the video quality, don't use those people. That's horrible.

Soooooo..... What are you trying to say?

Quote:

Originally Posted by pumapuma

Hello,

I just wanted to update everyone on the approach taken after all my research.

I ended up going with CinePost and can't be happier with the results. They were amazing to work with and I ended up getting a great deal on the processing. By sheer luck, I stumbled across their listing on eBay, similar to the below:

http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53...-/120906003627

It was listed for $19.50 per 50-foot-reel of 8mm or super8 (all-in), plus they have a 'make an offer' option. I offered $16.50 and they accepted. This works out to $0.33/foot, which is significantly better than what I could negotiate with them on the phone (~$0.52/foot, see previous post).

Anyway, hopefully this helps other people looking to get their home movies done in HD quality with a wet-gate system at an affordable price.

Thanks for the great feedback, your experience really helped. I just had a couple question regarding your ebay experience.

1) How many 'rolls' did you submit? Did you make an ebay offer on all the rolls, or just 1?

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?

http://www.posthouse.com/pricing

Any other info would help, I have 1650 feet (or 33 reels) so I'm trying to figure out cost.

Thanks!

[BubbaLovesTV]

So I decided to go with Cinepost. I happen to be in the Atlanta area so I dropped by in person. They were VERY nice and friendly and seemed to genuinely care and be honest. So I dropped off the film with them.

I had 1600 feet of film, so the total was around $650 (including a DVD). $17.50 per 50ft reel.

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.

It is expensive when you think about, but hell, you only get one change to get it right.

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.

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.







Large version:
Image: http://i67.tinypic.com/2w5nifl.jpg
Image: http://i68.tinypic.com/2d8m6w8.jpg
Image: http://i66.tinypic.com/2qvwq5c.jpg

I would be thrilled if someone else could tell me if this was results I should have expected. Thanks!

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BubbaLovesTV

Soooooo..... What are you trying to say?

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.

Quote:

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?

This was a good unanswered question. Perhaps you can now answer it?

Quote:

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.

Tell them that digitalFAQ.com referred you, if you don't mind.

Quote:

I had 1600 feet of film, so the total was around $650 (including a DVD). $17.50 per 50ft reel.

Given the level of quality (ie wet-gate process), price is fair.

Quote:

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.

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.

Quote:

It is expensive when you think about, but hell, you only get one change to get it right.

Yep!

Quote:

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.

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.

Quote:

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.

That's where Avisynth, DaVinco, Premiere, VirtualDub, and lots of editing time comes in.

Quote:

I would be thrilled if someone else could tell me if this was results I should have expected. Thanks!

That looks like a very nice transfer.

[bever]

I received my 8mm film transfer back from Cinepost yesterday. It is only about 4 minutes on a 3 inch reel. I chose the ProRes 422 format. Available is a lower bitrate quicktime mp4 and also DV. I got two files Back from Cinepost, one called dry and one wet.(I include two mpeg-2 snippets of each here as an example). My 4 minutes of film makes about 7 gb file dry and 6.9 wet with ProRes 422

Only think I could find to work with ProRes is "video to video converter" (which I found out about from a post by Goldwingfahrer).
Thanks Goldwingfahrer

Media info and "video to video converter" tell me ProRes uses 202 mbs A calculator tells me about 22 mbs. Maybe they leave a decimal point off. When I converted it for the samples (and archive) on video to video converter I chose 14kbs two pass. Once I got it into mpeg-2 form I was able to use Avidemux 2.6 to cut sections out of it.

The reason I submit samples from the beginning and midway through the film is the film has more damage/debris at the first several feet than halfway through the reel.

Yesterday I made (2) no menu DVD using ProRes-----video to video converter ----and imgburn to send to siblings. There might be a better way but it works using that flow

This condidion of this film is poor, It was taken around 1958. I am extremely happy to have it done. I am impressed with the vivid color especially. Yes I would recommend them and yes I let the contact person at Cinepost that I found out about them on Digitalfaq.

[lordsmurf]

ProRes422 can be opened in VirtualDub. The filter is in the version attached on this site.
Possibly CS4/5/6/etc versions of Premiere Pro.

Those wet vs. dry comparisons are really quite amazing.
A little Avisynth work could really make that better yet again. Add in some Mercalli to stabilize.

Care if I take those clips, and play around? This just gave me an idea for something to write up. It'd be perfect for the film/progressive aspect.

[bever]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

Care if I take those clips, and play around? This just gave me an idea for something to write up. It'd be perfect for the film/progressive aspect.

But of course
I am glad I received before and after copies. Now I realize how very bad shape that film was in.

I included all the scenes with the airplanes that were on the tape in the "mid" files I think that might have been an open house or air show at Westover AFB circa 1958.

[photoguy1234]

FYI - our company is also offering 1080P wetgate transfers in the Chicago area with ProRes output. The scanner has auto color correction and maintains black point so even without scene to scene correction, you get a good well-lit picture. Of course if it was shot in a dark room and there's no information in the shadows, you're going to be limited. The wetgate certainly makes quite the difference, especially when combined with the restoration scripts provided by the manufacturer which are custom avisynth scripts based on VideoFred's restoration script (he's on the filmshooting.com forums). Lordsmurf is correct that in general your results are definitely going to be limited by the film and optics originally used. But the results are quite impressive. Ours is the fairly new FilmFabriek HDs. There's some examples on the manufacturer's website www.filmfabriek.nl but we probably have better ones - just gotta pull that together. Not every film is all dirty and scratched up to really showcase the wetgate but those that are have amazing results.

Our company: www.TheDigitalConvert.com

P.S. I've been reading through this interesting forum lately mostly about experiences with TBCs etc. Good stuff. We had mostly been using a Kramer unit along also with Panasonic 7650s (which of course have the built-in TBC). We also have some Panasonic ES series but never knew about that passthrough method which is quite interesting. Will need to check that out. Just got some Datavideo TBCs at your recommendation - I see the TBC-1000 recommended but did you realize the TBC-5000 allows for 4 inputs and outputs in one unit? Unfortunately these have no conversion capacity for PAL to NTSC like the old TBCs but 4 TBCs in one is pretty neat. Can report on it when it arrives. Can talk more about that in another thread... thinking possibly about tape baking... unfortunate it's not offered much though I do see some places. There's some good info online about it and there's definitely some cases where it would be worth a shot.

[FlyingHorse]

Something to consider, if you choose not to use a wet gate process. DaVinci Resolve Studio has effects in their ResolveFx Revival category that may be helpful in removing dust, etc. in post-production.

[Winsordawson]

Just to post an update, I just had a large order completed with Cinepost, which I used for their wetgate transfer. Their website was down but I found their number through their FB page. They were having issues with their server provider but their website should be back up. They offered a discount if I sent in my films before Christmas, which was great because the costs really add up.

The wetgate transfer was definitely worth it because it filled in a lot of scratches, especially many vertical lines that cannot be easily fixed in Avisynth. This is because the Avisynth filters usually rely on interpolation between frames, and if the vertical lines do not move, there is no good frame to compare with. Doing a dry scan + Avisynth might be enough for some of the small scratches, but not the large vertical lines. I opted for ProRes output at 2k scan for the best resolution. They cost more that some other companies, they explained, because they review each reel manually for any splices that may snag in the machine. This is noteworthy because some older films have splices with tape that we did manually just to get it to work in the projector.

In terms of the company, everyone was very professional, and Myron, the owner, was easy to get in touch with. Plus, they upload all your films online before shipping in case you find any issues. This is important to point out because some places will charge extra to review your files online, even after paying.

If you want to see examples of their work, I restored some of the films and uploaded them to YouTube, which can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnjf69Moaf8

I did some light cleaning with RemoveDirtMC, but SpotLess was not used because it would be overkill and would hurt the fast flowing nature of the images.