Recommendations for Movie Transfers to DVD

As I indicated in a recent post, Video, the Value of Memories, and a New Year’s Resolution, I transferred a large number of movies from film to DVD over the holidays. I learned a few  things, and by the way, I am not recommending Yesvideo, which did the transfers. Here are the questions I wish I had asked:

1. How the movie film will be returned? Four carefully labeled rolls of film were returned on three unlabelled rolls. I now have no idea what is what and if I ever want to do anything with the film I will have terrible trouble finding what I want.
2. How DVD chapters will be set up? The chapters on my DVDs are randomly created, completely ignoring all of the carefully created titles that were part of the original film. In a few instances, the titles were selected for the chapter, but that was not the case most of the time.
3. Will a highlight video be included and how it will be created? Some of the titles were selected for my highlight video, without including the associated footage, which led to a completely bizarre experience when watching the highlight videos.
4. What software will be included with the video? I didn’t ask this question but am happy with the software that was included. If you want to use segments of your video for other purposes, such as posting to YouTube, you need the right software.

I hope these tips help. I am glad I had my movies transferred to DVD, in spite of the questions that I wish I had asked.

Note: I realize a lot of my difficulties would have been avoided if I had sent in each movie real as a separate order. At least that way the original organization of the movies would have been retained, and in fact much of the cost of the transfer is dependent on the length of the film so there is little cost advantage to combining multiple rolls of movie film on a single DVD. [Added 1/9/2010]

Advertisement