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Film Transfer from Regular 8, Super 8 & Super 8 Sound
HomeMovie.Com offers film to DVD transfer to round out the preservation of all your precious memories. While the majority of DVD transfers we do at HomeMovie.Com are from videotapes, we also provide high-quality transfers of your older film stock to DVD. Your film will first be transferred to video, and then to DVD using our Hollywood-quality equipment for preservation and easy viewing. Choose our Basic DVD for easy conversion, or our Director's DVD to have total control and customize your DVD with our online editing and authoring tools.

Many people that have old film do not know exactly what they have because they may not have a projector or their projector no longer works. Many of our customers have also inherited these memories and have no way to know what's on them. If your film is on a reel between 3 to 7 inches in diameter, it is probably one of the film types listed below. The good news is that unless you notice that the film is physically damaged in some way, it most likely can be converted. This is because film, while less convenient that videotape, is far more durable and subject to fewer forms of degradation than tape (although it doesn't even come close to DVD). Keep in mind that your film may our may not have sound on it depending on the type. If you like, HomeMovie can add background music to your DVD for an additional fee of $20 per 2-hours of film.

Use this handy table and calculator to determine your cost of film transfer and the needed quantity of DVDs for your order.

Film Transfer Section
# of 3-inch rolls (50 ft of film - 4 minutes)
# of 5-inch rolls (200 ft of film - 15 minutes)
# of 7-inch rolls (400 ft of film - 30 minutes)



Total Duration of Film:	Feet or Approx.	Minutes
Total Cost of Film Transfer

DVD Conversion Section
Total DVDs Needed for above Film

Total Cost with Basic DVD package:	$39 product
Total Cost with Director's DVD package:	$99 product

Step 1 - FIRST JUST SAVE IT!
Our recommendation with film memories is to assess your library and come up with a sample of approximately 2 hours worth of footage to have converted. This may be a variety of different numbers of reels as each reel size has a different amount of time recorded on it (although on average, 13 feet of film equals about 1 minute of footage). Select the Basic DVD product that we offer initially as it is the most cost effective while still preserving all of your footage in a digital format. Once you get back your sample DVD, you will have an idea of how the process works and what is on your reels. At this stage we recommend you send as much of your library as you have budgeted to preserve to us for conversion. Again, we recommend at this stage using the Basic DVD product as your initial preservation format.

Step 2 - Customize it
Once you have successfully converted your library to DVD, you may now work through the process of deciding what footage you would like to combine into more customized DVD Movies. If your goal is simply to preserve the raw footage and watch the video, you can stop here, secure that your memories will last a long time. However, if you have a lot of footage, you may now want to select certain sections that have more meaning and place them together onto fewer DVDs that will be viewed more often. Our Director's product allows you to take up to 5 tapes (remember, your film is now on tape as well as DVD) and select only sections that you want to have on a particular DVD and arrange them in any order you like with custom titles, thumbnails and chapters. You can take up to 10 hours of material and edit out a 2 hour movie.

If you have a large library that spans many years, we recommend that you don't send all of your material in the same box. While HomeMovie.Com has never had a customer's materials lost in transit (via the mail, UPS, or FedEx), we still recommend prudence when sending such valuable personal items. While you should get your entire library converted ASAP, make sure to send large volumes of film or tapes in a few separate shipments. As a rule of thumb, we suggest sending no more than 20 hours of raw footage per box (this is why our order page only allows up to 5 DVD movies per order).

Since most people have already converted their old films to videotape over the last 20 years, the DVD technology is focused primarily on conversion of videotapes rather than film. Consequently, the highest quality processes that exist for the transfer of old film are designed to convert it to videotape. As quality is our number one concern, we employ time-tested methods for this process before the conversion to DVD to ensure your memories arrive to the 21st century intact. As a result of this extra step, an additional cost is incurred above what we would normally charge for a video to DVD transfer. That said, the total cost to convert 2 hours or less of film to DVD is substantially less than any other company.

When placing your order, place an order for a Basic or Director's DVD for every 2 hours of film you are having transferred (see calculator above). Select "8mm film" as your media type. The costs shown on the order page will only reflect the cost of the DVD creation. The film transfer will be a separate charge once the transfer is complete, and will vary based on the total length of film converted.