Introduction 

Over the years, you've collected an impressive collection of home movies.  Depending on how far back they go, you might even have the movies on several different kinds of film and videotape.  And chances are, you've made movies of some very important events in your life for which you don't have any photographs.  Capturing these moments on film might have even caught that single instant of pure joy as your two year old opened the perfect Christmas present, something it's almost impossible to do with a still camera.  A slight hesitation, a run-down battery, an itchy nose... and the perfect moment is gone forever if all you have is a camera.  

Home movies, which could be on movie film or video tape, allow you to do more than see an animated memory. They also provide a means to turn a mediocre scrapbook page into something miraculous.  The problem most people face, though, is how to get that one perfect frame off the film and onto paper.

This series of articles will cover all aspects of saving your memories onto more long-lasting media (such as DVD) as well as how to print individual images from any movie once this transfer has been done.

This article covers the basic information you need to know to understand why your memories may be in danger of molding or turning to dust.

Movie Media

Over the last century since moving pictures have around, there have been almost magical changes in the way they are created and stored.  But it's only been in the last half decade that truly long lasting solutions have become practical to the average scrapbooker.

Movie Film

By far the kind of storage used for the longest time is movie film.  The most popular form of movie film until the 1960s was 8mm silent film.  Improvements in technology led to Super-8 film, and later, sound Super-8.  Less widely used by most home movies was 16mm film, which is still used for semi- and professional film production.  If you have dozens of reel of movie film sitting in a dark corner of your closet, chances are it's either 8mm or Super-8, depending on how old it is.

Movie film is very similar to non-digital camera film.  When unused, the film must be kept in a dark storage area (most reels came in a sealed pouch).  When being used in a movie camera, the shutter on the camera allows light to shine on a single frame of the movie film, essentially making a tiny photograph.  Taking between 18 and 24 frames per second, the camera creates the illusion of motion.  Once the film has been used, it must be developed in a lab the same way camera film is. 

The only way to view movie film is to have a projector that can show the type of film you have.  With the shutter of the projector flashing at the same speed as the movie camera, each frame is shown on a screen and your memories come alive.

There are many disadvantages to movie film. The format is so obsolete that e-Bay is the most likely source of cameras, projectors, and film.  Unless stored in absolutely perfect conditions (cool, dark, controlled humidity), film becomes brittle or, even worse, disintegrates.  There is always a possibility that in the years between viewing your movies, they may deteriorate so much that you lose them forever.

Movie studios have known about some of these problems for many years, even creating a motion picture preservation society dedicated to doing nothing more than making sure our cinematic history if safe.

Videotape: VHS and Beta

During the 1970s, technology had advanced to the point of bringing a movie medium into the home that had been reserved for television and motion picture studios: videotape.  Like anything that involves more than one company, the process to create a standard format was far from simple.  Ultimately, two competing formats were released: VHS and Beta.  Although technically superior and providing a higher quality picture, Beta was more expensive than VHS.  Given the choice between quality and price, people voted for price.  VHS is still the standard for home video tape.  S-VHS provides a higher quality picture while still conforming to the VHS standard.  (It should be noted, though, that you cannot play a S-VHS tape in a standard VCR, although you can play standard VHS tape in an S-VHS player).

Videotape stores movies as a series of magnetic patterns on a plastic tape.  This is very similar to how a standard audio cassette stores information.  A VCR reads the pattern off the videotape using what's called a "head" and converts them to video and audio signals which are then sent to your television.  Generally speaking, a higher number of heads in a VCR will provide a better quality picture when played.

Early video cameras used regular video tapes, the same as you use in your VCR right now.  This of course resulted in the video cameras being very large, to the point where some needed to have shoulder mounts to help people hold them up.  Even the smallest ones were the size of overnight luggage, thanks to the older technology and size of the videotapes.

Even though most people don't own a video camera that uses these videotapes directly anymore, there's a good chance that you've transferred video from other videotape formats to VHS, so your home movies are ultimately stored in this format.

While certainly more versatile, videotape suffers from similar problems to move film.  While the tapes don't need to be stored in a dark place, the tape is prone to molding.  Also, because the head of the VCR actually touches the tape as it plays, each viewing of a video degrades the quality of the picture.  If you've ever rented a videotape that wouldn't stand still while you were watching it, you can see the end result of many viewings.  The biggest drawback to videotape is that even if you want to make a copy to help preserve the movie, the copy will have a noticeably lower quality.  There is never a way to regain quality with a videotape.

Videotape: Camcorders

During the last 20 years, home video cameras have become much smaller, lighter, and more versatile.  In order to make them more compact, manufacturers created new formats of videotape.  Rather than having the fairly large and heavy VHS cassette to deal with, current formats are on tape stored in cassettes smaller than audio tapes. Formats of videotape include Standard 8 (not to be confused with 8mm movie film), Hi-8 and Compact VHS (C-VHS).

Viewing videotapes created by camcorders depends on the type of camera and the tape format.  C-VHS tape can be played in a standard VCR with an adapter cartridge.  Both 8mm formats can be played in the video camera that recorded them and watched on the display screen (if the camera has one) or on a television to which the camera has been connected with audio/video cables.  It is also possible to transfer movies from the camcorder to a standard VHS tape by connection the video camera directly to your VCR.

While making everything smaller, camcorders introduced another problem.  The videotape itself is still prone to deteriorating, but now the matter of what to do with possibly dozens of tiny tapes arises.  If you've been really good (and I know I haven't), you've put one of those plain little labels they give you with each tape on the spine of the case and labeled what's on each one.  And then you've stuck them all in a bag or box somewhere and forgotten about them.

Digital Videotape

In the last few years, digital video cameras have dropped dramatically in price and are now affordable to the average home user.  Digital videotape comes in two formats: Mini-DV and Digital-8.  Rather than storing video information as a pattern of magnetic signals, digital videotape saves the video as a series of 1s and 0s, exactly how your computer stores data on your hard drive.  This opens up a new world of possibilities for viewing movies.

While it is possible to connect audio/video cables between the digital video camera and a television, the true magic of a digital movie is that it can be transferred directly to your computer, with the 1s and 0s completely intact and the quality of the copy identical to the original.  In fact, because the video is digital, it's possible to copy the video as many times as you'd like without losing any quality.  Once the video is transferred to your computer, you can view it with any number of software programs.

With digital video tape, you are much closer to being able to print a frame of your video than you are with any of the other formats.

So now the question remains... what if you don't have a digital video camera?  Are you destined never to be able to print that perfect memory and save it in your scrapbook forever?

The next article will show you all of the options available to you for getting your movies into digital format, regardless of which type of movie film you have.