Here at Photo-60 Studios we have been converting old 8mm and 16mm home movies for customers since 1996. First it was to VHS tapes back in the late 90s, then in the 2000s DVD came out. This was the biggest break thru in terms of quality and technology. Nowadays the trend is to get 8mm and 16mm film to Digital.
For one transferring 8mm and 16mm to DVD was more convenient for customers. The DVDs came with chapter markers. We could title the chapters to what the titles on the 8mm and 16mm reels were. Plus the biggest advantage having your 8mm and 16mm onto a DVD was that you didn’t have to wait for it to rewind like you did with VHS tapes. You can also skip to the parts of the video that you wanted to see. Doing that on a VHS tape was such a pain. Another advantage that the DVD had over the VHS was that making a copy of the DVD did not lose any quality. Even if you made 100 copies from the master DVD, the 100th copy would be exactly the same as the master DVD.
Nowadays we have replaced DVDs with transferring 8mm and 16mm to a Blu-ray disc. It has the same exact features of the DVD, except you get much better resolution on the Blu-ray compared to the DVD. The Blu-ray’s resolution is 1920x1080P compared to the DVDs resolution of 720×480.
Currently the trend is to get the old 8mm and 16mm movies onto a digital format. Now when you get a Dvd or blu-ray with your 8mm and 16mm home movie transfer we give the digital format for free to the customer. The digital format has a few advantages over disc.
- You can enhance the Digital files with software like Final Cut Pro
- Each reel is an individual file.
- There is no compression or loss of video quality
- Easier to share via Youtube, Facebook or Dropbox
- Easier to store. Save 100 reels onto 1 hard drive instead of having them onto like 6 DVD Discs
- Make the DVD or Blu-ray how you’d like with any video editing software.
- 3 Format Choices. AVI, Final Cut Pro Res or MP4
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