Is Frame-by-Frame transfer easy on my film? Yes.  It is very gentle. Our 8mm and Super 8mm equipment machine has no sprocket wheels to damage the film.  The absence of sprockets assures the most gentle handling of the film.  Our 16mm machine does have sprockets which are necessary due to the much heavier weight of the larger reels.

How does the finished video run at normal speed on my TV? The Frame-by-Frame Telecine system captures a full image of each and every film frame and sends those images to the computer.  Next, software is used to apply a “pulldown” algorithm to convert the captured film frame images to the video frame rate of 29.97 FPS used in the USA. The conversion process is nearly identical to the very expensive Rank systems used in commercial media and television. The pulldown process creates a smooth movie without the "Keystone Cops" fast speed effect and without any hint of flicker.

Will the finished DVD or AVI tape have any flicker? Absolutely not!  That's our promise to you.

How much of the picture do you capture? The Frame-by-Frame equipment is fitted with oversized gates that “see” the entire film frame, just inside the sprocket holes.  The movies you get back will show more of the picture (side to side and top to bottom) than you ever saw on the old movie projector.

Do you clean and repair the film?  Yes, your films are inspected for tears or damage and are repaired.  Then they are cleaned and lubricated, and finally we do the transfer.  The cleaning and lubrication methods we use are the same as those used in major motion picture theaters.

Do you re-spool my movies onto big reels?  No.  Commercial "transfer mills" such as "big-box" stores splice and re-spool movies onto large reels so that they can be mounted on transfer machines and then left to run unattended and  unmonitored.  We monitor the entire transfer process, so there is nothing to be gained by splicing your small reels onto large reels.

What’s the resolution of the systems for film transfer? The Frame-by-Frame equipment uses a 3-CCD system and provides 540 horizontal television lines (TVL) resolution.

What is Color Correction? Due to a number of potential problems with storage, chemistry, etc., some old color movie film might have slowly discolored and may have become bluish or yellowish over time.  We can manually adjust and restore the quality of digital image of your transferred film in the computer before we burn it onto your DVD master.  Obviously, we cannot fix all the problems such as exposure, focus and white balance that may have been caused by the camera operator when the movies were originally shot, but we can restore a lot of the richness of the original colors.

What is Gamma Correction? When film images are transferred to television, the images that are in shadows are "squashed" or "crushed" into the black.  In other words, you can no longer see the details that were filmed in deep shadow.  We use gamma correction to pull those details out of the dark or black shadows to that you can see them again.  Drug store or photo shop transfer mills usually do not have any means to perform custom gamma correction.

Why is sound transfer more expensive?  Unlike most service providers, we will transfer Super 8mm and 16mm sound movies.  It is expensive because we still will capture your images using our frame-by-frame process at very slow film speed.  Then we separately capture the sound at regular film speed.  At that point we have the sound and the pictures, but they are separate files on the computer.  Next, we combine the picture and sound and resynchronize the sound to the pictures.  It is a manual process that is necessary to achieve proper "lip sync" throughout the entire movie.  Because consumer grade sound movie cameras did not run at consistent speed, the synchronization between the sound and picture slips apart as the film runs.  The process of painstakingly re-synchronizing the picture and sound requires skill and takes time.  Hence, the charge for that precision and unusual service.

How Much Fits On A DVD?  Although a DVD will hold 120 minutes of material, we recommending limiting it to 105 minutes (1 hour, 45 minutes).  We can pack a DVD with more material, but due to the way video is compressed to make it fit a DVD, the video quality begins to degrade.  We think our customers appreciate good quality video, so we recommend the more conservative general guideline of 105 minutes.  (Yes, we'll pack on 2 hours if that's what you really need.)  Oh, and slides?  About 1,000 slides or pictures will fit onto one DVD.

What is Animation?  Animation is an effect we apply to some still pictures to give them more life and make the viewing experience richer.  If you have ever watched a Ken Burns historical special (the Civil War, Baseball, etc.), then you have seen animation of still pictures.  The image is panned and zoomed to give the effect that the camera is moving over the scene or moving into or out of the scene.  We use animation to draw the viewer's attention to the key element of the photograph, be it a person, a group of people, a building, a certain object in the scene, etc.