Oddness with Old 8_mm
Films
Thursday, June
5, 2014 10:46:07 AM
Another Very Odd Day.
i have this box of old 8_mm films;
Mostly animations that i made in college or thereabouts, With clay or drawings,
& they’ve been sitting here for years & years, & many years ago, i
thought it might be fun to convert them to a digital format, So i looked into
that, & for whatever reasons, it came to naught.
i think ( seem to recall ) that i couldn’t find anyplace that would do
that, except for places far away, which i’d have to send them to, & then
they’d send them back, & i would
have much preferred to do it locally.
So i didn’t get that done.
But then— Recently; This urge hit me
again, & i found a local place just a few blocks from here ( ! ) that would
convert them for 35¢ a foot, which would have come to something less than $40
for 2 Rolls.
Which seemed very reasonable.
So after calling them up, i
procrastinated for about a week & then took two rolls over to get them
done.
When i first got there; There was a
small amount of confusion in that they were in a side Unit from The ‘Main’
Building, which featured the Street Number; 719. So i checked in with The
Clothing store there, & they directed me to The Unit around The Corner. It
also had The Street Number 719 on it, & i mentioned that they should be
719-B & The Cashier Lady said that The City would Not Allow them to do
that.
Which i interpreted to be Crazy Talk.
This should have been a prelude for
What was to come, Because as my conference with The Cashier Lady ( Theresa )
& The Manager ( A Slope Headed, Thick Necked Lout that Loved, Loved, Loved
to Yak & Yak & Yak ( ! ) ) proceeded; Everything they said was : Crazy
Talk.
It should have been very straight
forward, but they kept saying things, more & more things, that just didn’t
make a lick of sense to me.
At Best— They were making this
transaction much more complicated than it needed to be. Which may have been
resolved much more easily if they were prepared to simply ask a few elemental
Questions; Which they were Not Only Not Prepared to Ask;
And / But when i suggested that much of
The coming confusion could have been avoided by asking some simple; Very Simple
Questions, They were Adamant that they would Not.
[ They would Not! ]
: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - : o
In The Beginning.
They said it would take 2_weeks; Which
i’m always very suspicious of; Because if you get ‘behind’, you’re only going
to keep falling farther & farther behind. You’re never going to ‘catch up’
unless all The customers that you suckered in during The first wave of
business, became so fed up with you that they stopped bringing in new business.
But that’s a side issue.
- - -
So; At first; it seemed to be going
fairly straightforward, except That The girl behind The counter ( Theresa )
seemed ‘reluctant’ to take on my business. And by this; i mean that i clearly
showed her my two reels & she began to explain what they could do with
them, but i had to really press her to continue with The process of taking
them.
Then; i forget how this came up
exactly; i think i may have mentioned that i would like to re-edit them on
iMovie when i got home, So it didn’t really matter that they’d be going onto a
DVD with a Case & A Name on it. That was all completely irrelevant. When it
came to making a Case or Presentation folder for them, i could easily do
something like that myself, & do a much fancier job of it than The one that
they were offering.
It was about at this point that i
detected that it was possible that The format that she/they were going to
digitize them into — Wouldn’t or Couldn’t be read by my Computer. ( ! )
They apparently had two or more
different formats; One of which was for DVD Players only, & Another that
could be read by a computer from A DVD or Flash Drive. i thought that The Flash
Drive would be better, & i would buy one from them for something like
another $20.
Then; Things continued to get even more
ambiguous.
So i said in no uncertain terms that i
wanted them in a format they i could load into my computer.
Now !
At this point; It may ( or may Not ? )
have made any difference what kind of computer or platform i had, but they were
seemingly suggesting that it made all The difference in The world, But they
never asked me what kind of computer i had, & later when i begged them (
The manager— that by this time had come over & shooed The Cashier away ) to
just ask; What kind of computer i had, since it was apparently so important to
this process— He became completely hysterical !
‘We’re
Not Monkeys here that can be made to bark when we’re commanded to !’
- - -
And i; for my 2¢ worth, just wanted
these two film rolls to be digitized, So i was working very hard to smooth
things over, But i was becoming increasingly frustrated when i asked again
& again if The format ( M2TS : which
i have no experience with, but he was sure it was The Industrial Standard )
would work in my MacBook & He Absolutely & Unambiguously Refused to
give me A Straight Answer.
- - -
i haven’t worked with Video very much,
but i’ve opened iMovie, iMovie_HD, QuickTime & QuickTime-7 & played
around with them, as well as using Garageband to edit sound tracks for films—
So i’m Not Completely in The Dark concerning these things; But i have come away
from these experiences with The Impression that these applications are Not
always working on my side.
You can; for example, use Garageband to
very precisely edit a film’s sound track, But when you export it to say;
Flickr— There is a good chance that The Multiple Sound Tracks that you added to
The Film, will somehow
be forgotten ( ! ) So you have to do some crazy
things ( import The Garageband version to iMovie, & Export it from there !
) to fix this. ( ! )
Also; All of these Macintosh Apps seem
to very strongly prefer certain Apple-Specific Formats, Such as .mov, .mov or
.mov.
i can import .avi films from my Nikon
Camera, but i have had iMovie turn away other formats.
So i was concerned about this.
- - -
The Formats that i’m most familiar with
are .mov, .avi, .M4v ( which i think is The Same as .MP4 ) & that’s it. So
this talk about .M2TS sounded very scary.
It seems to me that if i wanted them in
.mov or .avi or .M4v; They should have been able to accommodate me. ( ? ) But
at The Time; i tend to be very naive about these things, & i wasn’t
expecting there to be any sort of problem like this AT ALL ! ( ! )
- - -
At another, previous point in this
craziness, i was; ( had become complacent ) that it would work, & i asked
him to just stop talking. He was just confusing me more. And of course; This
only made him Way, Way more Hysterical.
At Various times ( more than once ) he essentially said that he didn’t want my
business, then rescinded from this Position, But in The End— i was The one that
tore up The Order form & just left.
- - -
He was Not at all concerned ( ? ) when
i said i had a pile of these 8_mm rolls at home, & it would have been
several hundred dollars worth of business in The future.
For this Business; The Customer is Not
always right, or even allowed clarity in what format The Material would be Converted
to.
- -
It seems to me that they should have
asked me in No Uncertain Terms; What format & on What Medium i would like
The Films to be Digitized into; But they had their own preset structure which
was completely immutable.
: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - : o
The Business is :
Masterpiece Memories
Video Production
719 West Garland
Spokane Washington 99205
509- 290- 6076
- - -
It might be fun for you to call them up
& ask them for their impression of what happened yesterday ( Thursday; June
5th 2014 )
Then report that back to me, because
The more i think about it, it all seems completely incomprehensible ( ? )
- - -
Am i The Crazy One ( ? )
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