{"id":1336,"date":"2011-04-27T05:00:51","date_gmt":"2011-04-27T10:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wcardoneproductions.com\/blog\/?p=1336"},"modified":"2011-04-23T06:36:21","modified_gmt":"2011-04-23T11:36:21","slug":"what%e2%80%99s-all-this-hd-film-transfer-stuff-anyhow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wcardoneproductions.com\/blog\/2011\/what%e2%80%99s-all-this-hd-film-transfer-stuff-anyhow\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s All This HD Film Transfer Stuff, Anyhow?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Surfing the internet, the home movie film transfer consumer will find many service providers of home movie film transfer to HD media. We at W. Cardone Productions<\/em> made a decision in 2006 not to offer HD home movie film transfer until market conditions change. When market conditions do change we will adopt a process using HD that maximizes its benefits. Please read the discussion below to understand the reasons for our decision.<\/p>\n

As an early adopter of HD and HDV video, we at W. Cardone Productions<\/em> have learned much in the years since 2006 when we acquired our first high definition video camera. There are many nuances of high definition video that affect the overall quality of the final product. It is only natural for the consumer to think that HD is merely a higher form of DVD video. While properly produced HD video presents many striking improvements to picture quality relative to standard definition, if we ignore its nuances we do so at our own peril. Capturing close-ups of facial features is one example. Please see our blog post on this subject<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Before beginning this discussion we would like to thank Tom Koziol of Thomas Video Studio<\/a> in Eau Claire, Wisconsin who has done much pioneering work in this area and provided much of the information presented herein.<\/p>\n

Old 8mm home movie film images are mostly grainy old photographic frames, usually underexposed and have scratches from many previous plays on old projectors over the years.\u00a0Our findings have been that high definition didn’t yield improved picture quality when trying to copy old film, but did enhance the scratches, camera recorded lint and mold spores somewhat.\u00a0 Higher resolution capturing for old film can go too far and actually make the film look a little worse. A certain amount of reduced resolution is better for smoothing over some of the issues with film resolution. Because digital photos have a capability of 4000 x 4000 pixels, doesn’t necessarily mean that we are going to use file sizes that large all the time.\u00a0Resolution is image dependent.\u00a0Extremely low resolution 8mm\u00a0movie film\u00a0picture frames will not be improved by reshooting them with a high definition camera.\u00a0 The forgiveness of standard resolution of yesterday’s standard definition digital cameras is generally more than adequate and is as high in resolution as the old films will yield to anyway on a practical basis.<\/p>\n

We find that HD is not necessary for conversion and transferring home movie film, with the exception that a Blu-ray disc will not have the digital blockiness picture noise that a regular DVD disc has when playing an SD DVD on a high definition TV.\u00a0 That’s the only problem with playing any and all regular DVDs on a High Definition TV screen, 20th century standard definition DVD players connected to a 21st century high resolution TV look terrible.\u00a0 Low def just doesn’t look good on a high definition screen.\u00a0 Up-converting can even make SD DVD picture noise look worse.<\/p>\n

The reader is asked to keep in mind that Kodak invented 8mm home movie film almost as a joke.\u00a0 Their goal was to get a camera small enough for women (a huge part of their buying demographic) to fit into their purses. 8mm home movie film was never designed for photographic quality imaging.\u00a0 Any movie film photographer requiring the best in motion picture imaging, would have chosen 16mm German made cameras and equipment of the time.<\/p>\n

A single frame of 8mm movie film’s surface area is roughly the size of a #2 pencil eraser.\u00a0 With an image that tiny, magnifying and jacking up it’s resolution digitally will only reveal the limits of it’s composition (pixels or photographic dot matrix make-up).\u00a0 A piece of 120 grit sandpaper looks like a brown sheet of paper, possibly with some texture visible, when shot at it’s full size.\u00a0 Now, either scan that sheet at overkill resolution or screw a close-up diopter onto a camera to magnify only an 8mm square’s worth of area, and you will see every grain of sand and possibly the adhesive holding each grain onto the paper’s surface.\u00a0 There really does need to be some “resolution forgiveness” in order for this old 20th century photographic motion picture film to look reasonable.\u00a0 Unless someone goes through the non cost-effective time consuming process of photo-shopping every frame of film, one frame at a time…. you simply can’t make a fabulous 35mm picture out of an 8mm consumer movie film.\u00a0 It is what it is, and despite all these professional opinions out there making extraordinary claims about their brand of 8mm home movie film picture quality on DVD…. you just can’t polish a turd.\u00a0 Consumer movie film formats had their well deserved deaths for good reason.<\/p>\n

We in the home movie conversion and transfer\u00a0business promise to preserve and enhance the client\u2019s consumer home movie films to the best of our knowledge and experience with the tools that we have carefully chosen. That’s as far as we can go.\u00a0We are not “film restorationists” or “film lab technicians.”\u00a0We are digital media specialists who offer the retail consumer market the very best professional digital duplication of their photos, slides and home movie\u00a0picture films at a price they are willing to pay.<\/p>\n

Free Trial Invitation:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why not just take the easy road: Let\u2019s just dump all the hype of all the various service providers including ourselves. Let us convert and transfer to modern digital media DVD one 50 foot reel of 8mm home movie film without charge<\/span>. Send the same reel of movie film to a service provider offering HD transfer to Blu-ray media who will also provide a similar free trial service. Blank Blu-ray disks are still expensive at the time of this writing (several dollars) so offer to give him a few bucks to cover the cost of the disk. Compare the results for yourself. This offer is given for 2011 but may be available later as well. Please call for availability. Free pickup and delivery of your complimentary order may be available as well. Please call for availability and scheduling. We would not make a special effort to promote this free offer if we were not 100% convinced that our service is among the best in 8mm, Super 8mm, and 16mm home movie conversion and transfer within the Greater Detroit and Lansing, and southeastern Michigan regions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Presented herin are considerations relative to conversion and transfer of home movie films to HD media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,29],"tags":[64,67,52,73],"class_list":["post-1336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-transfer-dvd","category-legacy-media","tag-16mm-film","tag-8mm-film-transfer","tag-ann-arbor-and-detroit-videographer","tag-hd-home-movie-transfer-to-dvd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wcardoneproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wcardoneproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wcardoneproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wcardoneproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wcardoneproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1336"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/wcardoneproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1344,"href":"http:\/\/wcardoneproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336\/revisions\/1344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wcardoneproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wcardoneproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wcardoneproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}