HOW TO DIGITIZE PHOTO PRINTS, SLIDES, FILM REELS AND OLD VIDEO FORMATS FOR A MEMORIAL OR LEGACY VIDEO.
I have had the honor of working with numerous families preparing legacy and memorial videos for family and friends who have passed on.
These videos can be very powerful tributes to a life well-lived, and illustrating the impact a person has had on those around them.
Legacy and memorial videos are often created using photographs, film reels, videos and music. The existing photographs are often in a print or slide format, and not yet digitized - prompting the question of how to scan or digitize these images to be able to use in a memorial video. This question also comes up for “old” videotape formats and film reels where family videos might be.
I am often asked how best to prepare photos, slides, film and old video formats for editing a memorial video. My advice is to hire someone to do this job - as there are many great services available, and these services have the technology to capture and transfer these formats to a digital file, which is ideal for editing and additionally for family archive purposes.
I do want to support those who prefer to scan images themselves. It does offer cost-savings, and please note that the process is time consuming, and images are generally scanned one at a time. I speak from experience!
As a video editor, I am always looking for the best source images to use, as these help insure a great looking final program. So for photographs and slides, I recommend capturing these images at 600 DPI (dots per inch). Or in other terms, a standard 4” x 6” photo might end up somewhere around 10 Mb (megabytes).
With a higher resolution like this, it allows you to view these images at full screen and not have an image get pixelated, and also allows an editor some latitude to be able to use portions of a photo or to zoom in/out on a photo while maintaining good clarity.
There are a couple of vendors I would recommend for these services.
Option 1: For immediate fast In-house service - Photos only:
FedEx Office Services They offer in-house scanning services with about a 3-day turnaround. A bit pricier, but one pays for the speed and convenience.
Option 2: Less expensive, longer turnaround times, and need to ship collection (usually pre-paid):
Scan Cafe - I had a great experience having them scan our 2500 prints/slides family collection. Photos/slides/videos/film
Unfortunately, Costco no longer offers this service for videos or film.
iMemories - I have not used this company, but they look to be top notch. Standard photo scan is 600 DPI. This is the company Walgreens uses. Photos/slides/videos/film.
These are just a few of my recommendations. You may be able to find other local vendors close by with an internet search. Please contact me if you have any questions, or if I can be of assistance creating a legacy or memorial video for you.