https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B786237W/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
$400 bucks, so a sorta expensive gizmo.
When I was cleaning out my parents house after dad died, I found a lot of treasures. One of them was a large box of 8mm movies. From the late 1950 through the mid 1970s. Not just our immediate family, but the movies from my dad's parents, my mom's parents, aunts and uncles. Lot of em.
They had a projector, so I could have watched them, but I wanted them transferred to digital. I checked around and OMG that is expensive. Especially to "just do em all" and figure out what I have afterwards.
So back into the closet they went. Recently I came across them again. Time to look at what is available. I found several different makers of essentially a film scanner for movies.
I set it up yesterday and made some crappy MP4 movies because I missed one little film clip. It is tricky to get the 8mm film aligned across the scanning gate. There are 4 little bitty clip that the film HAS to go under, and then the frame holder is clamped down. And it is critical that the film goes under the first, over the second, under the third, and over the fourth roller then onto the take up spool. If not the movie is as jittery as a kid after a couple of Red Bulls, two Cokes and a bag of M&Ms.
A small reel of film is just 3min and 30 seconds or so. That takes 45 minutes to scan or "convert" to digital. It does not convert anything, it just makes a digital copy right to a SD card. That file is 250MB, in HD resolution. Of course the file is super small, so it is grainy and so not great. I am scanning a 7 inch reel of film now. It looks like that will be 4.5 hours total from turning on the unit, to rewinding it and putting the film away. Only 9 more 7 inch reels to do, and 5 more small ones. The unit runs unattended and just dumps the file to the SD card, so not computer hookup needed.
I found the movie of me riding my bike along side the Apollo 11 "moon bug" containment capsule. I waved to Niel and he waved back so we were buddies. A really exciting parade through downtown San Marcos, TX when LBJ came to town as the POTUS. I got to shake his hand, and we were buddies as well.
No doubt many other family treasures to be found.
In the end, I will upload them all the YouTube so if any of the cousins or my brother want to watch them they can.
I will also store the files on my RAID 5 system.