Well, friends, I am hoping to send a gift to my father. I would like to collect his old Super 8mm home movies and compile them into a digital format. Ultimately I want to edit them myself and burn them into CDs to bestow upon my old man.

Now I am a novice. What is the process by which one converts 8mm film into little bits of computer information? What sort of equipment is needed for the conversion? Will the film itself be destroyed in the process?

These movies were shot over early to mid 70s; they could very well have disintegrated by now. Surely they have lost frames here and there. Can I rely on a local camera shop to realize the conversion as perfectly as possible? I would prefer to convert them myself, if only to ensure that each frame is saved and restored to its full potential. I am wary that an impersonal shop will not attend rigorously to every detail.

I would be grateful if one of you fine folks would describe the steps of this transfer or conversion. Orientate me. Tell me where I stand.

[drewman]

I just did the same thing for my Mom and Dad for their birthdays (sept 6th and 7th).

I took their 8mm projector and projected a small picture on my shower stall wall. I then used a tripod and zoomed my DV camera in to frame this small picture. I had to turn on the shutter to get the picture to settle down.

Then I hooked a firewire cable up to the camera from the computer. I recorded the movies directly to my 45GB external firewire hard drive. (Pyro case with WD45 GB standard IDE drive).

I edited it all in iMovie 1.0.2, added some Dave Brubeck for a soundtrack and then spit it back out to the camcorder and made VHS dubs from there.

You could also export any size movie from iMovie for burning to a CD.

Good luck and it will take twice as long as you think so budget lots of time (and love).

drewman

You have hit upon a superior solution, drewman. I was concerned that the conversion of 8mm film would require a room of expensive equipment; I realize now that your method is by far the most trim and expedient.
Thank you very much for your post. I am relieved to have before me such an accessible solution. Now my father may blow the dust off the old box of reels. Thanks again.

You can buy from camera stores an inexpensive accessory ($50 range) that goes between the projector and the camcorder. This tremendously reduces the amount of space required for the setup, which can be well worth it if you have a lot of film to transfer and limited workspace.

If your family members have DVD players and you have access to a CD burner, you may want to consider giving the VCD format a try.
That's a CD format very popular in Asia, encoding about an hour of video into an MPEG1 stream on a CD. Worth a try...