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Samples of our VHS to DVD, 8mm Film Conversion and Video 8 Transfer Work here in Orange County
8mm film transfer
Nothing can beat the pure joy of seeing old film come back to life - like a window to a precious past. |
Video restoration
The video on the left screen was transferred cheaply; the right shows "repairs" we had to make. |
Sample DVD menu
Choose to have your home movies play right away; or get a custom designed menu. |
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"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards."STEVE JOBS (2005)
Offering VHS to DVD transfers, 8mm (super 8 and regular 8) and 16mm film conversions, Hi8 and Video8 transfers as well as miniDV and mini DVD conversions and video editing in Orange County and the following communities:
La Habra 90632, La Habra 90633, Stanton 90680, Los Alamitos 90720, Los Alamitos 90721, Seal Beach 90740, Sunset Beach 90742, Irvine 92602-4, Huntington Beach 92605, Irvine 92606, Laguna Niguel 92607, Lake Forest 92609, Foothill Ranch 92610, Irvine 92612, Irvine 92614, Huntington Beach 92615, Irvine 92616, Irvine 92618-23, Capistrano Beach 92624, Corona Del Mar 92625, Costa Mesa 92626, Costa Mesa 92627, Costa Mesa 92628, Dana Point 92629, Lake Forest 92630, Huntington Beach 92646-8, Huntington Beach 92649, East Irvine 92650, Laguna Beach 92651, Laguna Beach 92652, Laguna Woods 92653, Laguna Hills 92654, Midway City 92655, Aliso Viejo 92656, Newport Beach 92657-9, Newport Beach 92660, Newport Beach 92661-3, San Clemente 92672, San Clemente 92673, San Clemente 92674, San Juan Capistrano 92675, Silverado 92676, Laguna Niguel 92677, Trabuco Canyon 92678, Trabuco Canyon 92679, Westminster 92683, Westminster 92684, Westminster 92685, Rancho Santa Margarita 92688, Mission Viejo 92690, Mission Viejo 92691, Mission Viejo 92692, San Juan Capistrano 92693, Ladera Ranch 92694, Irvine 92697, Aliso Viejo 92698, Santa Ana 92701-3, Santa Ana 92704, Santa Ana 92705-7, Fountain Valley 92708, Irvine 92709-10, Santa Ana 92711-2, Fountain Valley 92728, Santa Ana 92735, Tustin 92780, Tustin 92781, Tustin 92782, Santa Ana 92799, Anaheim 92801-8, Atwood 92811, Anaheim 92812, Anaheim 92814-17, Brea 92821, Brea 92822, Brea 92823, Anaheim 92825, Fullerton 92831-4, Fullerton 92835, Fullerton 92836-8, Garden Grove 92840-4, Garden Grove 92845, Garden Grove 92846, Anaheim 92850, Orange 92856-7, Orange 92859, Villa Park 92861-9, Placentia 92870, Placentia 92871, Yorba Linda 92885, Yorba Linda 92886, Yorba Linda 92887, Anaheim 92899 .
We also offer VHS to DVD transfers, 8mm (super 8 and regular 8) and 16mm film conversions, Hi8 and Video8 transfers as well as miniDV and mini DVD conversions and video editing in Los Angeles County and beyond - by arrangement.
La Habra 90632, La Habra 90633, Stanton 90680, Los Alamitos 90720, Los Alamitos 90721, Seal Beach 90740, Sunset Beach 90742, Irvine 92602-4, Huntington Beach 92605, Irvine 92606, Laguna Niguel 92607, Lake Forest 92609, Foothill Ranch 92610, Irvine 92612, Irvine 92614, Huntington Beach 92615, Irvine 92616, Irvine 92618-23, Capistrano Beach 92624, Corona Del Mar 92625, Costa Mesa 92626, Costa Mesa 92627, Costa Mesa 92628, Dana Point 92629, Lake Forest 92630, Huntington Beach 92646-8, Huntington Beach 92649, East Irvine 92650, Laguna Beach 92651, Laguna Beach 92652, Laguna Woods 92653, Laguna Hills 92654, Midway City 92655, Aliso Viejo 92656, Newport Beach 92657-9, Newport Beach 92660, Newport Beach 92661-3, San Clemente 92672, San Clemente 92673, San Clemente 92674, San Juan Capistrano 92675, Silverado 92676, Laguna Niguel 92677, Trabuco Canyon 92678, Trabuco Canyon 92679, Westminster 92683, Westminster 92684, Westminster 92685, Rancho Santa Margarita 92688, Mission Viejo 92690, Mission Viejo 92691, Mission Viejo 92692, San Juan Capistrano 92693, Ladera Ranch 92694, Irvine 92697, Aliso Viejo 92698, Santa Ana 92701-3, Santa Ana 92704, Santa Ana 92705-7, Fountain Valley 92708, Irvine 92709-10, Santa Ana 92711-2, Fountain Valley 92728, Santa Ana 92735, Tustin 92780, Tustin 92781, Tustin 92782, Santa Ana 92799, Anaheim 92801-8, Atwood 92811, Anaheim 92812, Anaheim 92814-17, Brea 92821, Brea 92822, Brea 92823, Anaheim 92825, Fullerton 92831-4, Fullerton 92835, Fullerton 92836-8, Garden Grove 92840-4, Garden Grove 92845, Garden Grove 92846, Anaheim 92850, Orange 92856-7, Orange 92859, Villa Park 92861-9, Placentia 92870, Placentia 92871, Yorba Linda 92885, Yorba Linda 92886, Yorba Linda 92887, Anaheim 92899 .
We also offer VHS to DVD transfers, 8mm (super 8 and regular 8) and 16mm film conversions, Hi8 and Video8 transfers as well as miniDV and mini DVD conversions and video editing in Los Angeles County and beyond - by arrangement.
Website article: "Transferring Video? Some Things You Should Know Before You Start"
By Your Story Here
By Your Story Here
If you are thinking of converting your home movies, give some thought to what you want to do with them...
So, you are planning on transferring your 16mm or 8mm film to DVD. Maybe you have the original 16mm or 8mm film and maybe you want to transfer your Video8 or Hi8 video to DVD. Maybe you want to transfer your video to a hard drive. Quite likely you have already transferred video to VHS tapes.
In each case, now we are in the digital age, you are going to be "digitizing" your video.
Digitizing Video
When digitizing your home movie video, think about what you want to do with it. Play it on the TV via DVD? That's typical. Maybe you want to upload your old home movies to YouTube and send the link to your kids in college. That would be fun!
What about putting a piece on your iPhone or your Android? Did you know that more people are playing movies on their TV via their iPad - does that interest you?
Maybe you want to keep your options open. Are you considering creating an "archive" copy of your home movies - to reside on a new hard drive - in the best quality available? You could watch that from your computer (but not your TV). What then? Transferring your tapes to an external hard drive in full "dv" might be your best option.
For anyone considering video transfer, keep in mind that there is no one size or one format for digital video. There are many sizes and many formats and most video formats, but not all, involve some form of compression (read: some loss of video quality).
Depending then on where you want to display the video, and what options you want to keep open, your video may have different characteristics. And it's useful to think about all this before you order your video transfer, because you can always "dumb down" - but you can't "dumb up".
Video Attributes
What then are the main attributes of video to keep in mind?
1. Size (in pixels) - standard definition TV is 720 x 480 pixels, HD is 1280 x 720 and 1920 x 1080, iPhone 5 video is 1080p HD, original YouTube was 640 x 360. Any video can be shrunk to fit a small screen - and you will save storage space by doing so. Video can also be expanded, but the quality will always suffer.
A lot of mobile devices boast that they can play HD video. Think carefully if you really need an HD picture size (and an HD file size) on a very small screen display. (Your attitude may be different if you want to use the device as a player for an HD TV.)
If you are planning on transferring 8mm film (super 8 or regular 8) to video on DVD then you have some choices on size. It's debatable whether you get any real benefit from going HD with 8mm film though, given the very small size of the the original film frame - 4.8mm - and the limitations imposed by the original camera lens, filming conditions, camera shake etc.
2. Frame rate - i.e. the number of frames flashed on a display screen per second. It's usually 30 for standard definition video; up to 60 (interlaced or progressive) for HD; and 24 frames per second for cinema. Old film - Super 8, Regular 8 or 16mm - had all kinds of frame rates from 9 frames per second to 24.
You can reduce video frame rates to 20 or 15 fps if you want to keep the video file small - but the movie may look a little jumpy. Where file size is critical, you can make a big reduction by reducing your video frame rate but its generally best to keep it at (or increase it to) 30 - or 60p for some HD.
3. Data or Bit Rate: If frame size is like the diameter of a pipe, data or bit rate is the speed of the flow. A standard DVD pushes pictures onto the screen at an average of around 7Mbps (megabits per second); a YouTube video may use 2 or 3Mbps; Cable TV HD may be around 15Mbps; Blu-ray disks 30Mbps.
You can adjust your video's bit rate settings to reduce the video file size, or if the device demands it (e.g. the Apple iPhone has a 2.5 Mbps limit for video).
4. Audio format: Just as video has a bit rate, so does audio. But compared to video, audio bit rates are tiny. Good quality audio for a web video is 320 Kbps (around one-thousandth of the video bit rate). Nothing to worry about, in our opinion.
Common formats for compressed audio (it's usually compressed, unless you are playing a CD) are MP3 and AAC. Uncompressed audio formats like AIFF, WAV, and PCM may get you into trouble if you try to upload the video to the web or if you try to load the video onto a portable device.
5. Video formats: You can tell the current format of a video (any file really) by its suffix. ".mov" means it's a QuickTime file; ".MP4" means it's a, well, MPEG4 file; "wma", "wmv" and ".wav, are all Windows media files; and so on. DVDs use the "MGEG-2" format. Uncompressed video is often known as "DV".
What underlies each of these formats is a style of video compression (or "codec"). Common codecs are H.264 (Apple preferred) and WMV9 (Windows preferred).
So, you are planning on transferring your 16mm or 8mm film to DVD. Maybe you have the original 16mm or 8mm film and maybe you want to transfer your Video8 or Hi8 video to DVD. Maybe you want to transfer your video to a hard drive. Quite likely you have already transferred video to VHS tapes.
In each case, now we are in the digital age, you are going to be "digitizing" your video.
Digitizing Video
When digitizing your home movie video, think about what you want to do with it. Play it on the TV via DVD? That's typical. Maybe you want to upload your old home movies to YouTube and send the link to your kids in college. That would be fun!
What about putting a piece on your iPhone or your Android? Did you know that more people are playing movies on their TV via their iPad - does that interest you?
Maybe you want to keep your options open. Are you considering creating an "archive" copy of your home movies - to reside on a new hard drive - in the best quality available? You could watch that from your computer (but not your TV). What then? Transferring your tapes to an external hard drive in full "dv" might be your best option.
For anyone considering video transfer, keep in mind that there is no one size or one format for digital video. There are many sizes and many formats and most video formats, but not all, involve some form of compression (read: some loss of video quality).
Depending then on where you want to display the video, and what options you want to keep open, your video may have different characteristics. And it's useful to think about all this before you order your video transfer, because you can always "dumb down" - but you can't "dumb up".
Video Attributes
What then are the main attributes of video to keep in mind?
1. Size (in pixels) - standard definition TV is 720 x 480 pixels, HD is 1280 x 720 and 1920 x 1080, iPhone 5 video is 1080p HD, original YouTube was 640 x 360. Any video can be shrunk to fit a small screen - and you will save storage space by doing so. Video can also be expanded, but the quality will always suffer.
A lot of mobile devices boast that they can play HD video. Think carefully if you really need an HD picture size (and an HD file size) on a very small screen display. (Your attitude may be different if you want to use the device as a player for an HD TV.)
If you are planning on transferring 8mm film (super 8 or regular 8) to video on DVD then you have some choices on size. It's debatable whether you get any real benefit from going HD with 8mm film though, given the very small size of the the original film frame - 4.8mm - and the limitations imposed by the original camera lens, filming conditions, camera shake etc.
2. Frame rate - i.e. the number of frames flashed on a display screen per second. It's usually 30 for standard definition video; up to 60 (interlaced or progressive) for HD; and 24 frames per second for cinema. Old film - Super 8, Regular 8 or 16mm - had all kinds of frame rates from 9 frames per second to 24.
You can reduce video frame rates to 20 or 15 fps if you want to keep the video file small - but the movie may look a little jumpy. Where file size is critical, you can make a big reduction by reducing your video frame rate but its generally best to keep it at (or increase it to) 30 - or 60p for some HD.
3. Data or Bit Rate: If frame size is like the diameter of a pipe, data or bit rate is the speed of the flow. A standard DVD pushes pictures onto the screen at an average of around 7Mbps (megabits per second); a YouTube video may use 2 or 3Mbps; Cable TV HD may be around 15Mbps; Blu-ray disks 30Mbps.
You can adjust your video's bit rate settings to reduce the video file size, or if the device demands it (e.g. the Apple iPhone has a 2.5 Mbps limit for video).
4. Audio format: Just as video has a bit rate, so does audio. But compared to video, audio bit rates are tiny. Good quality audio for a web video is 320 Kbps (around one-thousandth of the video bit rate). Nothing to worry about, in our opinion.
Common formats for compressed audio (it's usually compressed, unless you are playing a CD) are MP3 and AAC. Uncompressed audio formats like AIFF, WAV, and PCM may get you into trouble if you try to upload the video to the web or if you try to load the video onto a portable device.
5. Video formats: You can tell the current format of a video (any file really) by its suffix. ".mov" means it's a QuickTime file; ".MP4" means it's a, well, MPEG4 file; "wma", "wmv" and ".wav, are all Windows media files; and so on. DVDs use the "MGEG-2" format. Uncompressed video is often known as "DV".
What underlies each of these formats is a style of video compression (or "codec"). Common codecs are H.264 (Apple preferred) and WMV9 (Windows preferred).
