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I am in the process of digitizing and burning to DVD several reels of 8mm film, there are 5, 6 and 7 inch reels, about 15 reels in all. Unfortunately, the customer I am doing the work for does not have a list of what is what and when for any of it. As I am going to be joining the reels in my film editor, can I go by the "last modified" date in the properties window of each reel as a best guess as to when the film was shot? These films were shot in the early 50's to late 60's.
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Phillip,
Sorry, I'm a bit confused here. If you are digitizing 8mm film, the initial "last modified" date would only refer to when you created that particular file. There would be no connection to when the films were actually shot. -
Douglas, all I know is if I open the properties window of any of the reels of film after digitizing there is a date that is the date I digitized the film, but there is also a date "last modified" and they all fall into different days and months in 2014. I suppose if that date is not correct or useable all I can do is edit the best I can with my video editor and burn to DVD. The guy I am doing the work for is kind of flakey anyway. He also gave me 16 seven inch reels of 16mm to digitize and said all he was interested in was movies of him and to hell with movies of his sister!Comment
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Surely you mean if you open the properties window of the files you have made not the actual films. I suspect the software you are using to make the files or the operating system you are usinghas problems with the metadata on the file and is just adding a random 2014 date.
I have just checked the properties of a scan of a still photo I did which says it was created in 2016, but modified in 2013 so I would not trust the info at all.Comment
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Save each reel captured as a separate file. Use a program like ImageGrabber to build a file of thumbnail images. Let the customer have those to determine the approximate date the film was taken.
Gregory
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Gregory, in the past all of my customers have been very particular as to how and what order thay want their tapes, films, slides put on DVD, CD or flashdrive and I have complied as best as I could. This customer doesn't seem to care what order the 8mm or 16mm films go onto DVD's. He told me to get as many on a DVD as I can. I have converted all the 8mm reels, about 12 of them and they are now in a folder as mp4 videos. I was just trying to figure out some way to determine some kind of order for the DVD's. I think at this point my best way is to just burn them to DVD in the order they were converted to digital files.Comment
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Film does not have Metadata. It hadn't been invented when Kodak was king. Not sure if Super 16 and above has a digital track but that is irrelevant.
Where you may be getting confused is with Digital TAPE captures via firewire, where you may well see some of the metadata in Properties, which would include date and maybe the time. Any half decent editing prog should be able to display all of the important metadata.
Of course in that case it is dependent on the camcorder being set up correctly in the first place. Way too many end users have never heard of RTFM 🙄
With regard to the Cine order, yes it's frustrating, when the baby turns up 4 reels before the wedding, which didn't happen "much" in the dark ages, but if the client is bothered, make a burnt in time coded DVD, or one with reel numbers overlayed, They email back the correct order, you shuffle the files,re-encode, make a new DVD and charge them extra.Comment
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My solution is to have numerical labels (as used in film processing lab) attached to each roll, and name each files accordingly.
At least the customer would have an idea which file is which. Then it's their business to figure out how to organize them.
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