Transfer film reels to DVD to save yourself the hassle of handling projector equipment to watch your favorite home movies.
Reel-loaded film is the medium that has been with motion pictures since the beginning of the art form. For a period, even home movies were shot on film. But following the introduction of home video camcorders in the 1960s, tape and digital recording have since dominated the market. People who were around to use the original film cameras will view them less and less to avoid using complicated equipment and wear on the original prints. But with the original equipment and a modern camcorder, it's relatively simple to move reel movies to modern and convenient DVD format.
Instructions
1. Load the film reel into the projector and face it toward a blank white wall. Set up the camcorder on a tripod next to the projector, also facing the blank wall. Turn out the lights and cover any windows. Turn on the projector light to calibrate the camcorder viewer to the projection, focusing the camcorder aperture to focus on the frame and have the frame fill the camcorder viewer.
2. Press "Record" on the camcorder and run the film projector. Watch the movie--and, once it finishes, turn off the projector and the camcorder.
3. Connect the camera to the computer via FireWire. Open the operating system's file explorer and download the movie file to the hard drive.
4. Open a new DVD project in the authoring program. Import the movie file into the project, then drag and drop it onto the main DVD menu. Mark the resulting text button "Play," or some equivalent. Write the DVD to a blank disc.
Tags: camcorder viewer, home movies, movie file