Of course, you want to keep your pictures out of the fire. It should be a matter of concern for anyone who cares about his or her family pictures and home movies. You don’t expect to have a fire in your home, but it can happen anyway. We all have insurance to cover the loss of possessions, but the insurance can’t bring back your one-of-a-kind pictures if they’re burned in a fire or lost in a flood. It’s not as hard today as it once was to assure that you don’t lose everything if your pictures or home movies are destroyed.
At Patchin Pictures, we had a customer who described how her mother always kept the family photo albums near the door. Her mother gave instructions to everyone in the family to grab the photo albums on the way out of the house if there was a fire. That’s a very smart idea. It’s a plan. We’ve encountered numerous people who lost all their family pictures in fires or floods because they didn’t have a plan to save them. Now, with the amazing level of technology available at relatively inexpensive prices, we all have the opportunity to save our old pictures and home movies from fires and floods without having to keep the albums by the door.
You should have a plan to save the most important assets you own. Furniture can be replaced, but the records of your history can not. Today, however, they can be backed up. Everyone’s at least somewhat familiar with photo scanning technology. Some may have heard about film transfers to video. But knowing about something and taking advantage of it are two different things. You have to take action.
A lot of picture scanners can give you good results, but you need to be aware of proper settings and some of the pitfalls of automatic modes. For movie film, there really isn’t a high quality, cost effective method available to consumers who want to do it themselves. Film transfers should be left to specialists who have the right know-how and equipment to do the transfers right. And for those who don’t want to scan their own pictures, professionals are available for that, too. I’ll give you a perspective on film transfers here.
(Please watch for our other blogs for details on the right way to scan pictures).
When video cassettes became a widely accepted format for recording and playing moving pictures, people wanted a way to get their old movie film to play back as easily as putting a VHS tape into a machine. They no longer wanted to roll out their movie screen, thread the film through a projector, turn off the lights in the room and grind their way through reel after reel of film. The convenience of those VHS and Betamax tapes was too appealing. So people started recording their projected films off the movie screens using their new video cameras. The original video tape formats were very poor. These formats, when combined with the inferior methods of transferring film to tape, yielded results that were less than desirable. But playback was convenient even if it looked worse than the projected images.
Now, we can produce film transfers that actually look better than the projected images. In the early days of video, when people recorded their movie screens, they inadvertently recorded the texture of the movie screens and the flaws in the projector. They were at the mercy of the poor quality video cameras, too. And, maybe worst of all, the images they recorded always flickered. (The flicker comes from the conflicting playback rates of film versus video). Although cameras have improved drastically, non-professionals don’t have many more do-it-yourself options today. But for those who get professionals to do the transfers, the results can be significantly better, assuming the professionals do the transfers right.
The best way to transfer film to video is through a process known as telecine, basically television-cinema. The best telecine processes are those used by big movie studios. They use extremely sophisticated and high quality systems to scan the film. For most of us, that process is far too expensive if we’re transferring home movies. It’s also overkill. The cost-effective way to transfer home movies to video is a scaled-down version of the high-end telecine machines. A good transfer company will use one of these systems. At the minimum, a home movie transfer should record the images off the film frames, not from a projection. In addition, a good transfer must include an adjustment to get rid of the film flicker. There are many other technical specifications and procedures that should be included in a good transfer. If all these things are part of the transfer, the final results will be superior to what you’ve seen in the past. These new transfers will reveal more detailed images that are more vivid and that even include more of the frame than you see in a projection.
Picture scans and film transfers can be stored in a variety of ways, and they can be duplicated (backed-up) without losing quality. They can be saved on CDs, DVDs, internal and external hard drives, and other portable storage devices and remote servers through on-line services. Picture files are typically smaller than movie files, so they don’t require as much media storage space. Keep in mind also, that picture files can be stored as individual images and they can be edited into playable videos. In many cases they can be stored both ways on one DVD (as files and as playable video). The film transfers can be stored as files as well as playable DVDs, also. These video files can be made in many different formats. The number of options seems to be expanding every day.
At the minimum, you should know that the technology is available so you can make high-quality copies of all your pictures and movies, and you can back them up in various locations. That’s the key. When you convert your pictures and films into these new forms of electronic media, you should keep multiple copies in multiple locations. Keep one set at home, and keep another set somewhere else, such as in another family member’s home or in a safe deposit box. Now, you’re safe. You’ve made sure high-quality back-up copies exist in different locations so that if one set is destroyed or lost, at least one other set exists somewhere else.
Now that you’ve taken the most important step in saving your memories, the next step is to organize your pictures and movies into a new project that reveals the purpose behind saving everything in the first place. Please see our other postings for great ideas to make your pictures and videos even more fun to watch and share.
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