CJS Technologies LLC ~ Digital Film Transfer, 8mm Film to DVD, Super 8 Film to DVD, 16mm Film to DVD

Our Process for a Typical Film Project

Upon Receipt of Film - First, we catalog all of your project materials. The reels of film are marked with labels, uniquely identifying your project materials.

Cleaning Your Film - We clean your film with chemicals specifically designed for cleaning and moisturizing film. This really improves the clarity of the final product and leaves your film in better shape than when you sent it to us.

Frame-By-Frame Digitizing Your Film - Your film is digitized through our frame-by-frame transfer setups directly to our video servers. These setups use 3-CCD, a.k.a. "3 chip", professional digital video cameras. Our film machines have enlarged gates. This allowing us to capture the entire frame of film instead of a cropped frame that is viewable through the gate in a standard projector. This will allow you to see more of your film than ever before. Our process allows your final DVD to have no flicker, correct focus, even light balance, excellent color and correct running speed. Just to be clear, our process is NOT "telecine" similar to that of some of our competitors. Telecine methods are susceptible to flicker and will not have the clarity of a frame-by-frame transfer.

Editing Your Film - A technician will then edit your film to remove all of the bad footage--leader, black film, white film. We will never remove any footage that has images on it. The film borders will then be cropped slightly so that only the picture will appear on your screen. Color correction is also applied at this step if necessary.

     MiniDV Masters - Your MiniDV masters will be written on Sony Premium MiniDV cassettes. They are written from the original edited source files. They have experienced no compression or file format change. All operations performed on them are lossless. These files also have no pulldown. This means that the film content on the tapes will appear to be running almost twice as fast, assuming that your film runs at 15fps or 18fps. These files contain duplicate field pairs in each frame. Technically these would be the best files to edit with, but the DV AVIs, which are discussed in the next section, are much easier to deal with.
     Each MiniDV tape is written in SP (Standard Play) mode, 62 minutes maximum, but each tape will hold approx 1h 40m of film once speed correction (pulldown) has been applied to the data on the tapes. If you don't understand the last sentence, don't worry about it.
     Upon request, we can write the pulldown files to the MiniDV tapes. This way the film will appear at correct speed when played from the tape. Some customers want this so they can watch the tapes at normal speed on their TV. The main reason they would do this is because this footage will look better from MiniDV tape than from Video-DVD. Don't worry though, the video-DVDs are extremely clear and crisp, but they do have inherent quality weaknesses that the MiniDV tapes and DV AVIs don't. If you choose this option, a surcharge of $20 per additionally needed MiniDV tape will apply. You will not be charged for the original tapes that would be normally used, just the additional needed MiniDV tapes.

DV AVIs - These data-DVDs contain the exact same content as the MiniDV masters, but with pulldown applied. Pulldown is a process where fields within frames are duplicated so that the film appears to run at correct speed, usually 18fps. Since they are written on DVD's, they can only be used in a computer with a DVD drive. The files contained on the disk should be copied to your computer's hard drive prior to editing. If you try to edit from the DVD, your computer's performance will suffer greatly because DVD drives are extremely slow when compared to hard drives. We recommend copying them to a 2nd hard drive in your computer if you have one.
The DV AVIs are written on high quality DVD+R disks. They are PC and Mac compatible (Yes, DVD+R is Mac compatible too, because these disks are read only when you receive them). Each disk will be labeled with the reels contained on that disk. Approximately 15-20 minutes of film are contained on each DV AVI disc.

Optional - DV AVIs on an external hard drive

Optionally, we can provide the DV AVIs of your film on an external hard drive. You can provide a hard drive with your shipment of your film to us, or we can purchase a drive for you and sell it to you at cost. There is a $30 additional charge for this service. But for many customers it is a great help for when they edit their film. All they have to do is plug it in and start editing. There is no need to copy the files from the DV AVI discs to your hard drive. Just keep those as a backup. You will need to specify whether the drive will be used on a PC or Mac and we will make sure it is formatted correctly.

DV AVI Compatibility:
PC Platform: These files are compatible with Adobe Premiere (Elements and Pro), Ulead MediaStudio, PureMotion EditStudio, Pinnacle Studio Version 9, Intervideo WinDVD Creator
Mac Platform: These files are compatible with Final Cut Express, Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, iDVD, iMovie

Note: The files may be up to 4.7GB each. So if you have a Mac G4 with a file system that doesn't support files greater than 2 GB, these won't work for you, the same for Windows 2000 users with a file system older than NTFS. All PCs with a DVD drive and Windows XP will accept these discs. Most Windows 2000 machines will also accept these disks. If you need any clarifications, please email us. We can make DV AVI discs compatible with these systems but there will be a surcharge of $5 per DVD. We do not offer support on working with these files and do not guarantee that they will work with the application of your choice. We do guarantee that the files will work in general and will not be corrupt.

Encoding Your Film to MPEG-2 - After your film is digitally edited and pulled-down, we create high quality MPEG-2 streams. To use an MPEG-2 setting of this quality (Max: 7031kbps, Avg: 2279-5375kbps), we have to limit the length of our video-DVDs to 90 minutes. Yes, we could use a higher bit-rate but this rate is more than sufficient. We give you other formats with bit rates higher than the current DVD standard is capable of sustaining. You will receive these MPEG-2 files on data-DVDs (DVD+R) for your use in authoring custom DVDs. Each reel is burned as an individual MPEG-2 file. These files are very useful if you want to give relatives DVDs of only certain reels of film. It saves you the time and hassle of converting files from the DV AVIs (or likewise MiniDV tapes) to MPEG-2.

MPEG-2 Compatibility:
PC Platform: These files are compatible with Adobe Premiere (Elements and Pro), Ulead MediaStudio, PureMotion EditStudio with MPEG XS plug-in, Pinnacle Studio Version 9
Mac Platform: These files are compatible with Final Cut Express, Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, iDVD

Look here for more about the MiniDVs, DV AVIs and MPEG-2s.

Authoring Your DVD - Next, we prepare the remaining assets for your DVD. The assets include the MPEG-2 stream(s), menus, and music (if you want it). The menus contain thumbnails and titles for each reel of your film. If you have specific titles you would like us to use, include them in your order form, otherwise, we will use whatever titles you have on the film boxes or film reels. If your boxes have no titles and you're not sure what is on your films, you can order a review upgrade. The DVD's interface is set up so that you can select any thumbnail from the menu and then watch the corresponding reel of film. We have a variety of music that can be added to your footage for $25 per DVD.

Burning Your DVD - After your DVD is authored, it is written to a high-quality DVD+R disk burned at 2.4x (the most compatible speed). Tell us if you want your footage on a different kind of DVD, we can write to all DVD formats (-R, +R, and DVD for Authoring). Your DVD(s) are tested, labeled, and placed in a labeled DVD case.

Payment - We'll call you prior to shipping your DVDs to tell you the total for your project and get your billing information. Then we'll charge your credit card. By request we can invoice you, but we will wait until we receive payment to ship your DVDs. Please let us know in advance if you wish to receive a invoice.

Returning Your Project - We will ship your TV DVDs to you in the US Mail, we will keep your other materials at our facilities. After you've reviewed these DVD(s) and are satisfied, we will ship your original films, extra DVD copies, DV AVIs, MiniDVs, and MPEG-2s back to you via FedEx Ground.

Project Backup - We archive every project's DVD assets so you can order additional copies without having to send us your DVD. This also serves as another level of security for preserving your film. Although we do try to archive all of your materials, we cannot guarantee that all of them will be backed up at our facilities.

The Final Product

Video DVD for your TV

MiniDV Master Tapes

DV AVIs on Data DVD for your computer

MPEG-2s for quick authoring of custom DVDs

Most Common Questions

Will the TV DVDs be compatible with my DVD Player? And What will you do if the DVDs don't work in my player?
	We use Taiyo Yuden DVD+R disks that are viewable in about 95% of DVD players or in a computer with a DVD drive. They are professional grade, Japanese made discs. We have been using this brand of DVDs and CDs for 2 years now and are extremely please with their performance. Your DVD player must be compatible with +R or -R discs or our product may not work. You will not be able to find a company that can make discs that are compatible with these players because they will also be using +R or -R discs. We try to use the most compatible DVD discs written in the most compatible way. If you have a combination DVD and VHS player assume that our DVDs, and any other "burned" DVDs, will not work on it. We do not support these combination units. We actually aren't sure why manufactures don't support -R or +R discs on these players, but they just are junk. Please don't purchase these units. Purchase a stand alone DVD player. If your player is incompatible with the DVDs we provide you, you will have to get a new DVD player. It's a inconvenience to a very small number of our customers, but potential compatibility issues should be a non-factor when deciding to have your films transferred to DVD. There are just too many positive reasons. DVD players are now available for under $30. You'll end up having an extra DVD player for another TV! Some manufacturers of inexpensive players are APEX, Coby, there are many others too. Just ask a sales representative at the store when you look for one, or read the documentation to see if they play +R discs. It is rare that we run into compatibility issues. We use high-quality, high-compatibility discs written at 2.4x, the most compatible writing speed. We also verify all discs we write, which is very important for burning working discs. Verifying a disc means that the data that is written is checked bit-by-bit against the source files to make sure that everything is good. We try to make our discs as compatible as possible because it is a hassle for us if a disc doesn't work.
Will I get my original films back?
	Yes, you'll get them back when the project is complete. In fact, your films will come back to you in better shape than when you sent them. They will be cleaned, splices will be changed, and we will change the leader if necessary. If you don't want us to return your films, let us know. Also, if you'd like your small reels spliced onto larger reels, let us know ahead of time. We splice them onto larger 400' reels before they are cleaned and digitized, but we will return them on their original reels unless told differently.
Do you have any hidden fees? What do you charge extra for?
	No, we have no hidden fees. Our main fee is the price you pay per reel for your film. The other normal charges would be shipping and taxes. Other charges may be upgrades such as music or a review upgrade. If you would like a quote prior to your project being run, please write a note on the order form that you will include with your project. We will always contact you before we charge a credit card. Extra fees may apply if you want reels split up into smaller segments. We bill at $50 per hour of actual work for this. We can't give a quote on this work, because the amount of time varies by the job.
Is it safe to send my films to you?
	It is extremely safe to send your films to us. Make sure to use a carrier that provides a tracking number. We have thousands of shipments every year. In our 7 years in business, we've never had a package lost in-route to us or back to our customers. If you're really concerned, please send us an email or call us. Even if you take your films somewhere in your locale they may ship them off to someone elsewhere. Shouldn't you deal with the actual service provider? Not only that but we offer only the highest quality transfers which probably aren't available in your area. People from all over the world from the largest cities to small farm towns choose to send their projects to CJS Technologies.