Film and tape, identified
The box in the closet
Reels in cans, cassettes in three sizes, a camcorder with a dead battery, and no way to play any of it. This site tells you what each thing is, how long it has, what a transfer costs, and how to keep the result. It sells nothing.
The film will outlive you. The machine that plays the tape will not.
Acetate film from a family attic is usually readable a century after it was shot, and you can check it by holding a frame to a lamp. Magnetic tape holds a signal that means nothing without a deck, and the decks stopped being made years ago.
That is the whole shape of the decision. Work through the tape while machines still exist, and give the film the storage that stops it turning acid.
The identifier
What have I got?
Six questions with a ruler. Nothing here needs a projector, a deck or a specialist.
The index
Thirteen formats a US family box actually holds
- Regular 8mm 1932 to the early 1990s Standard 8, Double 8, Double Run 8, Cine-Kodak Eight, 8mm
- Super 8 1965 to the present Super 8mm, Kodak Super 8, Super-8, Single-8 (Fuji, same picture, different cartridge)
- 16mm 1923 to the present 16 mm, Cine-Kodak 16, Super 16, single-perf and double-perf 16
- Pathe 9.5mm 1922 to 1960 Pathe Baby, Pathex (US), 9.5 mm, Pathescope
- Kodachrome 1935 to 2010 Kodachrome II, Kodachrome 25, Kodachrome 40 Type A, K40, K-14 film
- Ektachrome 1946 to 2013, reintroduced 2018 Ektachrome 160 Type A, Ektachrome 64T, Ektachrome 100D, E100D, Ektachrome Commercial (ECO), VNF
- VHS 1976 to 2016 Video Home System, full-size VHS, T-120
- VHS-C 1982 to the early 2000s VHS Compact, Compact VHS
- Betamax 1975 to 2002 Beta, Betacord (Sanyo), L-500, L-750
- Video8 1985 to about 1998 8mm video, 8mm tape, Handycam tape
- Hi8 1989 to 2007 Hi-band Video8, Hi8 XR, Sony Hi8
- Digital8 1999 to 2007 D8, Sony DCR-TRV tape
- MiniDV 1995 to the early 2010s DV, DVC, Mini DV, also HDV on the same cassette
01
Work out what it is
A ruler settles almost everything. Film width first, then the sprocket holes, then the cassette shell. Six questions and you have a name for the thing in your hand.
02
Find out what it needs
Every format has its own running time, its own failure mode and its own price per unit. The entry for yours says what a lab needs to know before it quotes.
03
Decide what it costs
Doing it yourself is cheaper in money and much more expensive in hours, and tape has to run in real time whoever does it. Forty tapes is sixty hours of machine time.
04
Keep what you get
A hard drive is not an archive. The Academy worked this out for the studios in 2007 and the same arithmetic applies to the drive on your desk.
What you have
Most boxes hold two generations of recording. The older one is film: small reels of 8mm or Super 8, sometimes 16mm, shot between the 1930s and the early 1980s, with the picture visible if you hold a strip to the light. The newer one is tape, from the full-size VHS cassette down to the ones the size of a matchbox, shot from the late 1970s until phones took over. The identifier below this text sorts them by size and shape in a minute or two. The grid under it has a page for each, with the specific failures and the specific prices.
What the site helps you decide
Three things, in order. Which reels and tapes are worth transferring, which are already in trouble, and what to do with the files afterwards so the work does not have to be done twice. The pages on decay and storage cover the first two. The page on the digital dilemma covers the third, and it is the one people skip and regret.
Why the clock is running
Film is patient. A frame of 8mm can be read by a light and a lens for as long as the plastic holds together, and in a cool closet that is a long time. Tape is not patient. It can only be read by the machine it was made for, and those machines stopped being built. Funai, the last company making VCRs, ended production in July 2016. The international association of audiovisual archives, working with UNESCO, estimated that routine transfer of magnetic tape would end around 2025 as working decks and spare parts ran out. The tapes may be fine. The deadline belongs to the machines.
The tapes may be fine. The deadline belongs to the machines.
What they are
For most of the twentieth century the only moving pictures of ordinary people were the ones ordinary people took. Newsreels covered parades and presidents. Television covered whatever sold. Nobody with a budget filmed a back yard in Ohio in 1962, or a kitchen with the radio on, or a grandfather who never let anyone photograph him being caught on a beach by a child with a camera. Home movies did. They are unposed, because nobody knew how to pose for them. They are in color from years when the official record was mostly gray. They show what the cars looked like when they were new and what people did with their hands when they talked. They are, for the century they cover, very nearly the only record of unremarkable life that anyone has, and every reel is a small piece of it that exists in exactly one place. That is the reason to open the box.
Questions people ask
- how do i know what kind of film reel i have
- Measure the width of the film and look at the perforations. Regular 8mm and Super 8 are the same width, but Super 8 has smaller, more widely spaced sprocket holes and a larger picture area. 16mm is twice as wide, with holes down one edge or both. The identifier on this page walks through it with the reel in your hand, and each format page goes into the details that separate near-identical cassettes.
- can old home movies still be played
- Film can, on any working projector for its gauge, though a shrunken or vinegary reel should be scanned rather than projected because a projector will tear it. Tape depends on finding a working machine for that exact format, and none are being made: the last VCR manufacturer stopped in July 2016. For tape the practical answer is a transfer while decks still exist, since the tape usually outlasts the machine.
- how much does it cost to transfer old home movies
- For film, most services price by the foot, and a typical inherited reel is 50 to 400 feet, so a box adds up quickly. For tape, pricing is by the cassette or by the hour of footage. This site gives the ranges on each format page, gathered from the market and dated, and never as a quote, because the same reel costs different money in different cities. It does not recommend a service and takes no commission.
- what should i do first with a box of old film and tapes
- Smell it. A sharp vinegar smell means acetate film that is already decaying, and that reel goes away from the others and to the front of the queue. Then sort by format using the identifier here, count what you have, and move the box out of any attic, basement or garage into an inside closet. Then decide what to transfer while tape machines are still around. The storage and decay pages take each step further.