July 4, 2005

In the course of 2005 I had all my 8mm films, mostly taken in the 1960's and 1970's, converted and burnt on to DVD's. I had first tried to do the job myself, using back-projection on to a translucent screen and filming the projected image with a digital cine camera on the other side but the results were less than brilliant (not enough light, flickering due to synchronisation problems etc) so I rapidly gave up the idea and looked for someone with the equipment and expertise to do the job. My choice fell on FilmFix.ch, almost by accident, but it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

Frankly speaking, if I had not had my films converted I would probably never have looked at them again. The task of installing projector and screen, threading the film through the gate and onto the spools, and afterwards the rewinding and dismantling of the apparatus was sufficiently daunting to mean that it kept on being postponed. Not to mention the possible need for resplicing if my old splices failed to stand the test of time…

Now it is merely a question of popping the DVD's in the player and sitting back with the remote controller. Memories are priceless and there they are, on screen at the touch of a button. Thank you Laura and Natheniel. May the force continue to be with you!

Incidentally I did quite a lot of subsequent editing to improve and rearrange sequences (I started off with 6 hours of film) and to add material. To help me in this I used an item of software which I found on the Web and which I can also thoroughly recommend, namely Cinematize from http://www.miraizon.com. This software allowed me to strip out the video tracks and edit them and add sound tracks and titles, before reburning as a final step. Lots of work, but well worth the effort.

Peter Stait

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