Convert Your Super 8 Film to Digital. Do It Once, Do It Right.
50 to 100-Year Lifespan
Super 8 was the film of family life from the mid-1960s on: birthdays, holidays, road trips, first steps. We scan Super 8 frame by frame in true HD and 2K on touchless, cold-LED equipment, restore color scene by scene, and capture the magnetic sound stripe when your reels have it, so you get the whole moment back, not a cropped, faded copy. We also convert 8mm film and 16mm film to digital, part of our full film to digital transfer service.
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When the producers needed Steven Spielberg's childhood films converted at the highest possible quality, they chose Legacy Digital Productions. Your family's reels run on the same scanners, handled by the same technicians.
Since 2001
Hollywood 's Choice
In-House Processing
Expert Technicians
Trusted with Super 8 film by Hollywood and American households for 24 years. The number-one choice for high-quality Super 8 and cine-film transfer.
See the Super 8 difference.
With Super 8, the transfer method decides how much of the picture and sound you keep. A cheap screen-capture transfer crops every frame and ignores the sound stripe. Our frame-by-frame Super 8 scan keeps the entire image, corrects color as it goes, and pulls the magnetic sound when it is there.
Super
8 Film to Digital: How to Rescue the Home Movies of the ’60s, ’70s, and
’80s
If your family owned a movie camera between 1965 and the mid-1980s,
chances are those little yellow boxes and 3-inch reels in the attic are
Super 8 film. Birthday cakes with too many candles, road trips in the
station wagon, Christmas mornings in shag-carpeted living rooms. Super 8
was the format that recorded an entire generation of American family
life.
Those reels are now forty to sixty years old. Every year they sit,
the color fades a little more and the film gets a little more fragile.
The good news: transferred correctly, Super 8 can look astonishingly
good on a modern TV, better than most people ever saw it on a pull-down
screen in the den.
After several decades in this industry and millions of feet of film
digitized, here’s my complete guide to getting your Super 8 film
converted to digital, and getting it done right the first time.
First Things
First: Is It Super 8 or Regular 8mm?
Before anything else, it helps to know exactly what you have, because
“8mm film” actually covers two different formats, and they require
different handling on the scanner.
Kodak launched Super 8 in 1965 as an upgrade to the older regular 8mm
(also called Standard 8 or Double 8) format. Both films are eight
millimeters wide, but Super 8’s sprocket holes are much smaller, which
freed up room for a frame about 50% larger. Bigger frame, more picture
detail, and a different perforation pattern that a transfer machine must
be set up for.
The quick way to tell them apart: look at the sprocket holes along
the edge. Regular 8mm has large rectangular perforations; Super 8’s are
small and nearly square. Super 8 also typically came back from the lab
on reels with a larger center hub, and the film itself was sold in the
famous plastic cartridge rather than on a spool you threaded
yourself.
Can’t tell? Don’t worry. Any competent lab will identify each reel
during intake. At Legacy Digital Productions we transfer both formats
(and 16mm besides), and sorting mixed collections is part of the
everyday work.
The DIY
Temptation: Those Little Converter Boxes
Search “Super 8 to digital” and you’ll be offered a wall of consumer
converter machines, most of them a few hundred dollars. Super 8 is the
format these gadgets are primarily built for, so the DIY option is more
real here than with any other film gauge. Should you take it?
Here’s what those machines don’t advertise. Most capture at low
resolution with tiny, inexpensive sensors, frame alignment drifts, and
the exposure is fixed, so dark scenes stay dark and overexposed beach
days stay blown out. They have no film-cleaning step, so half a century
of dust gets baked into your digital copy. And they pull your brittle,
decades-old film through plastic guides with no tension control.
You’ll also spend real time: a 50-foot Super 8 reel runs about three
minutes, and a typical family collection of 30, 50, or 100 reels means
many long evenings feeding film through a slow machine, once per reel,
with no second chances if something jams.
I’ll be direct about where I stand, and about why my opinion carries
weight: my company has transferred film for everyone from young families
to Hollywood studios, and our work appears in HBO’s documentary Spielberg. The producers
brought us Steven Spielberg’s own boyhood reels when only the best
transfer would do. Professionally scanned Super 8 and machine-box Super
8 are not the same product. Not even close.
What a
Professional Super 8 Transfer Actually Involves
The market is crowded now. Hundreds of companies advertise home movie
digitization, up from a few dozen ten years ago, and quality ranges from
museum-grade to genuinely destructive. (The worst offenders still
project film onto a wall and point a camera at it. Yes, really. In this
decade.)
When you’re comparing labs, dig into three areas: how they treat the
film before scanning, what their scanners actually do, and what happens
to your footage after the scan. Here’s what the answers should look
like.
Film Prep:
Inspection, Repair, and a Proper Cleaning
Every reel should be inspected on arrival and checked for
brittleness, warping, mold, and failing splices. Super 8 collections are
full of home-made splices where Dad joined three camera reels onto one
big reel in 1974, and those old cement and tape joints frequently need
redoing before the film can travel through any machine safely.
Then the film must be cleaned and reconditioned. This step separates
professionals from hobbyists more than any other. Fifty years of dust,
fingerprints, and dried lubricant sit on your film, and a
high-resolution scanner will faithfully record every particle of it
unless it’s removed with proper film-cleaning chemistry. The cheap
solutions some shops use can attack old emulsion; the professional-grade
solutions cost several times more and are worth every penny. We know
this area particularly well at Legacy Digital: we developed our own film
cleaning system, which other transfer labs around the world now buy from
us. Our solutions recondition and lubricate the film as they clean,
leaving your originals healthier than they arrived.
The
Scan: Frame by Frame, in High Resolution, with Gentle Handling
Ask one question first: “Do you scan frame by frame?”
Continuous-capture systems record the film while it plays, which
introduces speed drift, motion blur, and that jittery, sped-up
“old-timey” look people wrongly assume is just how old film is. It
isn’t. Super 8 was typically shot at 18 frames per second, and true
frame-by-frame scanning, which photographs each frame as an individual
still image, lets the lab rebuild playback at exactly the right speed,
smooth and natural.
Resolution is the next question. Super 8’s larger frame holds
noticeably more detail than regular 8mm, and Kodachrome, the film stock
most Super 8 was shot on, resolves beautifully when scanned properly.
Look for a lab scanning beyond Full HD 1080, up to 2K. That’s the level
we scan at exclusively at Legacy Digital; it’s the top of the industry,
and Super 8 deserves it.
Then there’s how the machine touches your film. Modern archival
scanners move film with sprocketless, touchless roller transport.
Nothing grips those tiny Super 8 perforations, which on old film are
often the first thing to tear. And the film should be lit with cold LED
illumination, not hot incandescent bulbs that stress fragile acetate.
Our scanners use both, on every machine, for every reel.
Don’t Forget Sound Super 8
One more prep-room detail: from 1973 on, Kodak sold Super 8 sound
cartridges, which recorded audio onto a magnetic stripe along the film’s
edge. If any of your reels have a rust-brown or bronze-colored stripe
running down one side, you have sound film. Make sure your lab can
capture that magnetic soundtrack in sync during the scan. Voices from
fifty years ago are worth even more than the pictures.
After the
Scan: Where Good Transfers Become Great Ones
Most transfer companies hand you the raw scanner output and call it
finished. The best labs treat the scan as a starting point. Two
post-scan processes make the difference you’ll actually see on your TV
screen.
Color Correction, Scene by
Scene
Super 8 color shifts as it ages: Ektachrome reels drift toward red
and magenta, underexposed indoor scenes sink into murk, and no two reels
fade alike. Scene-by-scene color correction adjusts brightness,
contrast, and color balance individually for every scene on every reel,
pulling the footage back toward what the camera saw on the day. Because
frame-by-frame scanning captured each frame as its own image, these
corrections can be applied with real precision.
Grain Reduction That
Respects the Film
Super 8 has a distinctive grain that is part of its charm, but age
and enlargement onto a 65-inch television can turn charm into noise.
Intelligent grain-reduction software smooths the exaggerated grain and
pixelated edges while preserving true detail, so the footage looks like
film, not static.
At Legacy Digital, scene-by-scene color correction and advanced grain
reduction are both included free with our Premium Quality service level.
We consider them essential, not extras.
Choosing File
Formats for Your Digitized Super 8
When the work is done, you’ll choose how your footage is delivered. A
good lab asks what you plan to do with it and formats accordingly; a
lesser one hands you whatever compresses smallest. The main options:
MP4 is the format for living. It plays on every
phone, TV, tablet, and laptop; it uploads straight to YouTube and Google
Photos; it emails and texts without fuss. For most families, MP4 copies
are what actually get watched. Its only limit: it’s compressed, so it’s
not the ideal source if serious editing lies ahead.
QuickTime MOV with ProRes is the master copy: the
near-lossless, every-pixel-preserved format that professional editors
and archives use. Files are big (plan on a hard drive), but if your
footage is irreplaceable or destined for a documentary project, a ProRes
master is the gold standard.
MKV is a flexible open-source container favored by
digital archivists, though many TVs and Apple devices won’t play it
without extra software. For the technically confident only.
AVI with DivX/Xvid encoding survives for
compatibility with older Windows PCs and aging media players. It’s
occasionally useful, but rarely the best choice for a new transfer.
A note for anyone planning a family film project: Super 8 footage is
a wedding-video and anniversary-montage staple, and if yours is headed
into Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, or DaVinci Resolve, request a ProRes
or high-bitrate master to cut from. Editing an already-compressed MP4
and exporting it again compresses twice, and quality dies a little each
time.
At Legacy Digital, you pick your delivery formats after the scan. And
if you’re unsure, tell us what you want to do with the footage and we’ll
recommend the right combination.
Where Your
Files Should Live: Drives, Discs, and Cloud
Plan for more than one copy from the start. The archivist’s rule of
thumb (three copies, two kinds of media, one off-site) is the standard
we suggest to every customer.
A USB thumb drive is the workhorse for Super 8
collections: it plugs into smart TVs and computers directly, it’s
durable, and typical family collections in MP4 fit easily. An SD
card offers the same convenience in a smaller package if your
devices have card slots; just label it and back it up, because small
things get lost. A hard drive becomes the right primary
copy for big collections or ProRes masters; it’s the cheapest storage
per gigabyte, with the caveat that every drive eventually fails, so it
must never be your only copy. Blu-ray discs deliver
full HD to any Blu-ray player and make handsome gifts, though disc
players are slowly vanishing from homes. DVDs remain
the friendliest option for older relatives, but remember DVD is standard
definition: your 2K scan gets down-converted, so a DVD should be a
sharing copy, never the master. And cloud storage
(Google Drive, Dropbox, and the like) lets scattered family stream
everything instantly while doubling as the off-site backup that survives
fires, floods, and dead drives.
A combination that serves most families well: thumb drive or hard
drive at home, a cloud backup, and a few DVDs or Blu-rays in holiday
gift wrap.
Your Originals Come Home Too
A proper transfer ends with your original Super 8 reels packed
carefully and shipped back to you alongside the digital copies, fully
tracked and insured. They come home inspected, repaired, cleaned, and
reconditioned. Digitizing doesn’t replace your film; it protects it.
Store the originals cool, dry, and dark, and they’ll keep for decades
more as the ultimate backup.
And Then: Movie Night
Somewhere in your collection there’s a three-minute reel nobody has
seen since the projector bulb burned out in 1982. Soon it will be on
your television: steady, color-corrected, at the right speed, maybe even
with sound.
Invite everyone. Make popcorn. Watch the room when the faces
appear.
About Legacy Digital
Productions
Legacy Digital Productions has digitized Super 8, regular 8mm, and
16mm film for families, filmmakers, and studios across North America
since 2001. We use the same equipment and processes trusted by the
Academy of Motion Pictures in Hollywood (MPAA), the USC School of
Cinematic Arts, and the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and
Television.
Simple, honest Super 8 pricing. Pay only for the Super 8 film we convert.
No prepaid boxes, and no paying full price for half-full Super 8 reels. Our estimator assumes full reels; blank or unrunnable Super 8 footage is never charged.
A standard Super 8 reel holds 50 feet, about 3 to 4 minutes. Send us silent or magnetic-sound Super 8, and only the film we actually convert is billed.
Choose your quality tier.
Per 50 ft. reel
Gold
Platinum
Pro 2K
Price with current discount
$17.50 $14.00
$27.50 $17.50
$35.00 $22.50
True frame-by-frame, touchless scanning with cold LED light
Film cleaned, reconditioned and lubricated
Compatibility guarantee
Advanced grain reduction
Post-edit to adjust color, saturation, contrast and exposure
Hard-drive delivery is available on every tier; supply your own drive and skip the markup. Super 8 sound film with a magnetic stripe is captured in sync when present.
What happens to your film here.
Clean & recondition
Every reel is cleaned and lubricated with the same solution studios use on archival prints. Never isopropyl alcohol, which dries and damages film over time.
Frame-by-frame scan
Touchless, sprocket-free capture under cold LED light. No hot bulbs, no gears, no projector. Gentle enough that we've run film from 1924.
Scene-by-scene review
A technician adjusts color, contrast and brightness before delivery. We can't always make old film perfect, but we make it look as good as it can.
Returned better than it arrived
Splices repaired as needed. One family's film in the studio area at a time, and no reel ever leaves the building.
The same equipment Hollywood trusts with its history.
We use the same professional scanning equipment and processes trusted by:
That's why editors and executives from CBS, ABC, Universal, Disney Animation, Paramount, Sony, Lightstorm Entertainment and Atlas Entertainment bring us their film, and why more than 20,000 families have trusted us with theirs.
"We are not finished until you love it, even if we have to pay for shipping back to us to fix a mistake. And if someone else can produce a visibly better product, we will refund your money."Scott Foster, Founder
"The scans were clearer than the originals. Now my kids can see moments I never thought I'd get back."
Dana K.
"Legacy Digital did a fabulous job of getting our old family films and slides digitized for my parents' anniversary. The quality was amazing and my parents were so surprised."
Jennifer L., Long Beach, CA
How it Works
And you’ll have the best quality transfers available at a fair price!
Collect, inventory, pack and drop off or ship your media
We receive your media, prep and clean it, digitize it
You rediscover past memories with family and friends
Frequently Asked Questions
With the current discount, transfers start at $0.28 per foot ($14.00 per standard 50 ft. reel) on the Gold tier. Sound film adds $2.00 per reel. Larger reels are simply more feet: a 200 ft. reel counts as four standard reels, a 400 ft. reel as eight. Use the online estimator for a down-to-the-penny quote; it assumes full reels, so most clients pay slightly less than their estimate.
The main reason you want to put your family memories on DVD is that DVDs last forever right? WRONG!! All DVDs have a shelf life and do fail eventually. And, once a disk starts to go bad, it becomes unreadable. So, instead of the picture fading or degrading a little at a time, you go from perfect to nothing in one step.
Most services like ours use regular disks. They are said to last 2 to 5 years. We don’t think that is acceptable so we use the top of the line Gold Archival DVD disks made by Mitsui. These disks are superior for two reasons: First, the construction of the disk is much more durable. It can take punishment and age better than any other disk. Second, the information layer is actually made of gold.
Gold can hold information better than the assortment of metals used in other disks. The result, a disk that is thoroughly tested and rated for a shelf life of over 100 years. These disks have been tested against other gold disks and every major maker of DVDs. They stand out as far superior in every case. That’s why we insist on using them, and that’s why you should insist on getting them.
Why doesn’t our competition use them?
Because they are many times more expensive than any other disk. When you want your data to outlast your grandchildren, insist on the best disks on the market, Mitsui Gold Archival DVD disks. And to play it safe, we recommend that you order a backup copy to keep at a second location just in case. (Blu-Ray disks are not available in gold yet, but we do use the highest rated Blu-Ray disks available. Again, backup copies are highly recommended.)
Regular 8 and super 8 mainly differ by the type of reel they are on. The center hole on a regular 8 reel is too small to fit a pencil through. On Super 8 film, the center hole is almost as large as a dime. If your Super 8 has sound, it will have chocolate brown stripes along one or both edges of the film.
8mm film of any type has holes on only one side and is skinnier than your finger.
16mm film is about as wide as a man’s index finger. If it has holes on both sides (make sure you check the actual film, not the white leader) it is silent film. If it has holes on only one side, it is sound film. 16mm film can come on reels as large as 1600 ft (about the size of a giant pizza).
The result you will get from your film transfer can vary greatly depending on the type of process you use. At the bottom of the list are services that will run your film on a projector and videotape the screen for you. This would represent the poorest quality process. This would be about a 2 on a 1 – 10 scale for quality.
The next step up would rate at about a 5 to 6 on the scale. This process is commonly called a telecine transfer. This machine looks like a projector, but instead of having a lense, it has a video chip that captures the image from the film. This yields OK results, but the original resolution is one fourth of what a dvd is capable of, and if you capture the film that way, you cannot take advantage of the full quality a dvd is capable of showing.
Our process would rate a 9.5 on the scale. The only way to get a better quality picture is to go to the high end Hollywood type transfer houses that usually do work for the studios. They can charge 10 to 15 times more than our prices and are certainly out of reach for family budgets.
When we transfer your film to dvds, we take the time to do it right. First we clean and recondition your film. We use the same film cleaner and process that motion picture studios use on their archival footage and master prints. (Watch out for the guys who use isopropyl alcohol. It is a drying agent and will damage your film in time. This saves them about $60.00 per quart, but the person who pays the price is you.)
We then scan your film frame by frame directly to lossless computer files. This frame by frame capture gives you superior results, it is much safer than other methods, and has much better color, contrast, and clarity. Frame captures are done by a high definition 1080p optics system that will trump other telecine systems every time. Frame scans are also natively high definition, 1080p resolution so there is no attempt to upscale inferior footage.
Before we burn your files to disk, we take the time to go through the footage and adjust color, contrast and brightness to enhance the picture quality even further. We can’t always make old film perfect, but we can make it look as good as possible.
We use only the best professional, gold archival dvd disks for top of the line performance and longevity (Blu-Ray disk are not yet available in gold, but we do use the highest rated disks available). These top of the line disks are tested and rated for an over 100 year shelf life. Don’t believe everything you hear about dvds lasting forever, the disks you use make all the difference. These disks are the longest lasting media of any kind. They also cost us about 10 times more than other disks.
That’s why most people don’t use them, but again, the person who pays is you. Our disks are also NOT copy protected. You are welcome to make copies of your product all you want. I recommend at least one backup copy on the gold disks, but you will not have to wonder if I am still in business 5 or 10 years in the future if you want another copy. You will be able to do it yourself.
High-definition or 2K digital files delivered on flash drive, hard drive, or in the cloud, fully editable on Windows or Mac and never copy-protected. Gold archival DVDs (rated for a 100+ year shelf life) and Blu-ray discs are available on the Gold and Platinum tiers for family members who prefer discs
For larger orders our service includes pick up and delivery throughout the Southern California area. We are located in Orange, CA. We cover all of San Diego, Orange, Riverside, LA, and most of San Bernardino Counties. Please understand though that we are willing to go farther for larger orders.
For smaller orders or locations outside our delivery area, you can use Fedex or UPS. Just make sure you have a tracking number. You are always welcome to bring your film to our studio as well.
Our services are conducted in house by our staff only. No one takes a single reel out of the office, and no one touches the film except our small staff of video technicians.
Only one family’s film is in any one location at a time. If your film is being cleaned and reconditioned, only your film is in that area. If your film is being scanned, no one else’s film is anywhere near the capture station. When your film is not being worked on, it is tied into a bag with your name inside and on the outside of the bag.
No one has ever lost a reel with us and we have been in business since 2001 with thousands of customers.
Our systems are very slow and gentle. There are no bright or hot bulbs and no sprockets or gears in our capture systems so your film cannot be damaged by the process.
Your film will be returned to you in better condition than it is now. As needed, splices are repaired etc.
Yes. The problem with the internet is that to show you a full quality video clip of any length would take forever to download etc. Although a web sample cannot quite do our film transfer justice, there is a small sample of our transfer on the site. To view, just return to the home page and click on the large film transfer graphic on the upper left of the page. When we meet, I will show you a full quality sample DVD of a real customer of mine (with his permission). That way you will see it just the way you will experience yours, on your TV.
This is a two step process. First we capture the picture through our frame-by-frame metod. Then we have to run your film through a projector to capture the sound. We then match them up in our editing system. This process does put your film through a projector so there is some risk of damage, but our machines are in brand new condition and closely monitored.
We can run Super 8 with magnetic sound (a chocolate brown stripe on the edges of the film) and 16mm with either type of sound (sprocket holes on only one side of the film)
Because of our gentle frame-by-frame scanning method, we can run film that is older and in poorer shape than anyone else. We have run film from 1924 successfully. The condition of your film can possibly be too poor to run. Here’s how you check: open a reel and unroll it from the spool by pulling the end straight out. If your film can withstand this simple test, you are probably fine.
Next, look at the film from side to side (across the width). As film ages it can tend to curl into itself. Instead of being flat, it can curl so far it can look like a tube instead. If it is curled, test it by pinching the film between your thumb and first finger. If you can pinch it and flatten it in your fingers without breaking it, your film will run fine. Please note, we never charge for film we cannot run, so if you’re not sure, there is nothing to lose by trying.
Please call the office to inquire about our current backlog.
We are usually about 4 to 6 weeks out, but that depends on the season and current circumstances. Rush orders are available at additional cost. This will ensure that your order will be completed within one to two weeks depending on the size of your order. It is always difficult to say what day your film will be done exactly.
Everyone’s film is different and we take the time on every single order to make sure it is done right, even if we have to spend extra time and redo scenes until we are happy with them.
Please understand that you are hiring us because of the attention we pay to detail and quality, not speed.
How Legacy Digital compares on film quality
The mail-in box services (Legacybox, Southtree, Kodak Digitizing) and the big-box stores digitize film at 480p standard definition, one-to-one, with no color correction. Legacy Digital scans at Full HD 1080p or 2K (higher than the film itself), with scene-by-scene color restoration, on studio-grade equipment (the type developed for the Academy of Motion Pictures). That is why Hollywood studios and executives, Netflix productions, and universities choose us.
| Film quality | Mail-in and big-box services | Legacy Digital |
|---|---|---|
| Scan resolution | 480p SD (their published spec) | Full HD 1080p or 2K |
| Color and restoration | One-to-one, none | Scene-by-scene color restoration + grain reduction |
| Who does it | Mailed to a bulk facility | In-house since 2001, studio-grade scanners, never lost an item |
Compare us directly: Legacy Digital vs Legacybox, Southtree vs Legacybox, Kodak Digitizing vs Legacybox, or see how we compare to every major service.