Convert Cine Film to Digital

It might, but most home cine film is silent. Some Super 8 film has a magnetic audio stripe, a thin brown or reddish line running along one edge of the film. We cannot currently capture audio from cine film, so transfers are picture only, even where a sound stripe is present. Standard 8mm film almost never has sound.

This is dye fading, and it is extremely common in colour cine film from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The cyan and yellow dyes in the emulsion break down faster than the magenta dye, which shifts the overall colour towards pink or red. We apply careful digital colour correction during scanning to restore the natural white balance as closely as possible, bringing back the blue skies, green grass, and natural skin tones that the film originally captured.

Yes, always. When we splice smaller 50ft reels onto larger archival cores for scanning, we return both the original empty small reels and the larger reel containing your film. Everything comes back to you exactly as described, in protective packaging.

A vinegar smell means the acetate film base has started to break down, a condition archivists call vinegar syndrome. We can usually still scan film in the early and moderate stages of this process, though severely affected film may be too shrunken or brittle to pass safely through the scanner. We assess every reel before scanning and will let you know if there are any issues. If your film smells of vinegar, sooner is better, because the process accelerates over time.

We scan at the standard frame rate for the film gauge: 18 frames per second for Super 8 and Standard 8. If your film was shot at a non-standard speed (some cameras had variable speed settings), let us know and we can adjust. The output is a smooth, flicker-free digital video file.

Not at the moment. We digitise Super 8 and Standard 8 (Regular 8) only. If a reel turns out to be 9.5mm or 16mm, we will let you know and return it to you untouched, and you will not be charged for it.