HERNDON, Va. — How many of you have boxes secreted away in some closet of precious home movies imprisoned on old-fashioned 8 mm film of some form? It may already be too late for some, but if these nuggets of memory have been stored in a reasonably responsible manner there still may be time to save them and share the past with others on the ‘Net.
The easiest way is to log onto the Internet and find one of hundreds of service bureaus that will take your fragile, moldy films and transfer them to pristine videotape or very expensive DVD disks. All it takes is time and lots of plastic (grin).
Until the introduction of reasonably priced DVD archival processes the past two years or so, the cost of transferring film-based home movies has been limited to videotape. While this process stops the clock on losing the images, another stopwatch begins ticking because video tape also has a finite life, and tapes being played multiple times will wear out, shred in poor quality players, etc. Also, while it is easy to make additional copies of home movies once they are transferred to tape, each copy is a “generation” Copies made from copies from copies eventually deteriorate into dim, flickering mush.
Well, thanks to new technologies, cheap hard drive space and an old-fashioned piece of equipment it’s possible for anyone at home to transfer old home movies to either CD or DVD disk, depending on one’s pocketbook (grin).
The key to making crisp, bright digital reproductions rests in the video camera you choose and with the quality of transfer device that you choose. Essentially, these devices are nothing more that a box with two or more mirrors and a screen on which to project the movies. It’s possible to buy cheap, plastic affairs for under $50-$60 that, as my grandmother would say: “Good enough for government work.” If you plan on doing a lot of these transfers, plan on spending over $100 or so because these transfer devices have this, quality screens and excellent optics to faithfully transfer the images of old to new media.
It is also possible to use a dark room, your camera on a level, squared tripod and your projector likewise square and just video tape the movie from a flat white wall or movie screen. However, the farther away the cameras from screen or wall, the less sharp the final images.
If you do not already have a video camera, or plan to upgrade to a more modern format, to spend the extra dollars for the new digital media type of camera because of the quality of reproduction. They key to quality reproduction is the CCD in the camera and the lens.
Once the camera and transfer box are acquired, the rest is easy: Your movie projector goes in one end of the box, your video camera in another. I also recommend purchasing a new bulb for the projector for the most consistent lighting.
Just turn on the camera and projector (be sure and check the focus of both projector and camera) and let the copying begin. Also, follow the example of most commercial copy house and gently clean the film before projecting it. Not only will the image look better, the act of winding and rewinding the film will allow for more even film speed through the projector.
The finished tape can either be directly played back on television, transferred to standard VHS tape, video CD (which has about the came quality as VHS) or to DVD, Video CDs hold about an hour or so of movies, but DVD disks can hold anywhere from 4-6 hours of movies in crisp digital detail. This data can also de transferred to the ‘Net via e-mail or on a web page.
Remember your finished digital copies of movies cannot be any better than the original movies that were shot. If the person holding the camera was not steady, the original image fuzzy, etc., so will the final product. However, if you have the patience, it is possible to colorize old black and white film with some software products.
Finally, if you can afford a DVD burner in the first place it is not necessary to make a: middle man” tape of movies. Just record the image/audio from your home movies directly to hard drive space in digital form. Then, transfer that data from hard drive space and then to DVD for archival storage, instead of videotape. Copies made from DVD are always “first generation.
Also it is better to store your movies “raw” from the reel to DVD, then copy the DVD back to hard drive and edit the movies into a more viewable production and then reburn edited DVDs.
If you are handy with hammer, saw, glue and other tools, several plans are available online to build transfer boxes. Plus, these same devices can be used to transfer those boxes and scores of photographic slide carousels to a digital form.
Cox switchover a breeze. Just as many of you, I was not thrilled to hear that Cox was going to transition all of its customers from Road Runner to their own network. I had all kinds of nightmares about resetting and IP addresses not working correctly, etc. I even asked Cox why they had to do this thing when all finally seemed to working correctly.
Alex Horwitz, Cox Cable’s new director of public affairs said, “We’re transitioning our customers over to the new Cox High Speed Internet service so that we can better ensure performance and reliability.
“We are working to ensure that the move to our advanced broadband network is simple and convenient for all of our customers.”
They succeed: I received my distinctive blue packet in the mail, followed the very precise directions and never missed a beat. Since I was already a customer and already online it was just a matter of checking my settings against what the booklet said. All I had to do was uncheck a singe box and leave all my other IP settings the same.
What did change was how I SENT my mail and received mail from my new Cox e-mail address. The one bummer about the changeover is the loss of my old Roadrunner-based e-mail address. However, since I never used it in the first place, the trauma was minimal. Upside-wise I now have up to seven e-mail addresses under my Cox account, can read my Cox e-mail via any web page and have 5 megs of mail storage space. (I think that’s small by today’s standards) and a 10-meg Web page.
Plus, Horwitz said after June 30 when the switchover is complete for Cox’s over 45,000 broadband customers is that tech support will be entirely local.
Customers still receive their POP-based e-mail from any authorized source, but MUST use the Cox SMTP (send mail) server. Also, because Cox’s IP addresses are assigned on a random basis every four hours or so, some customers may not have contact with their office computer systems because of their company firewall restrictions.
