Tech How To | At Home with Tech

December 7, 2025

How to Digitize Your Parents’ Old 8mm Movies

It’s been three years since my father passed away, and I’m still working on digitizing many of his old photos. I also have his negatives and ancient slides. It’s been a slow and painful process, both physically and emotionally.

I can’t possibly digitize every photo. So, I need to decide which ones are important in telling the official family history.

Are You Peering into an Alternate Universe?
Curating a family’s story across generations can be a draining process. Some photos fit in nicely to support your own memories. Others seem like splinters to slightly alternate dimensions.

There can be a variety of little surprises that force you to realign your understanding of your own past. The good news is that can also contain priceless gems. These gifts can make what is an otherwise time-consuming process worth it.

So, I’ve started. Stopped. And started again, sometimes months later.

I’ve been using an Epson scanner/printer for my parents’ old prints and a Wolverine slide/negative converter to drive my digitizing/archiving project.

I’ve made progress, and I know there’s a finish line out there, which I’ll eventually reach.

What are You Supposed to Do with 8mm Film?
But I’ve also inherited dozens of my father’s 8mm film reels. They’re tiny time capsules from decades ago that reveal the past in action… three minutes at a time.

But how am I supposed to convert this ancient media without a working film projector?

I had three choices:

Package up my 8mm movies and mail them to a company to do the work.
Find a store in town where I can physically hand over my dad’s motion pictures.
Buy a conversion device to do it myself.

Do You Actually Know What’s On Those Film Reels?
Mailing out your film reels to digitize is usually less expensive than using a local brick and mortar operation. (That said, working with a local establishment may feel more secure, because there’s no risk of losing your film in the mail.)

But mailing it in can still be relatively expensive. And that price point can sting even more if you don’t really know what’s on all those film reels. (My father didn’t label his reels well.) So, you may be spending hundreds of dollars for old footage that you wouldn’t otherwise want to keep.

Yes, it’s a different story if you do know what’s on your film. With that level of knowledge, paying someone else do the conversion is an incredible time saver and can be worth it.

But for me, the only way to know for sure is to first engage a do-it-yourself strategy. And then if you uncover a few reels that contain priceless memories, then you can send just those few out for professional conversion.

So that’s what I set out to do…

Film Digitizers to Consider
There are two conversion devices on the market that I researched:

Wolverine Data Film2Digital Moviemaker-Pro
Kodak REELS Film Digitizer

These movie film scanners literally photograph each frame of your film (8mm or Super 8) one at a time and then stitch them all together into a movie file on an SD card.

This takes a while.

Each 3-minute reel takes about 30 minutes to scan. So, you should plan your workflow accordingly.
There’s no sound conversion
(8mm film didn’t contain sound anyway).

Ultimately, I ended up purchasing the Kodak REELS Film Digitizer because it creates a slightly higher resolution file (1728×1296).

Who Are Those People?
As I write this, I’ve converted my 10th film reel. So, I’m about five hours in, and I’ve got a long way to go…

The process has so far felt like sifting for gold. I’ve found plenty of family vacation footage from tropical locations with me running around as a young child. Yes, I know I was cute, but a few of those shots is all anyone could possibly want to watch now.

Then, there are clips of what looks like friends of my parents, but they are total strangers to me. They may have a place in another family’s family archive, though not mine.

Remember you really can’t tell what you’re going to get from the first few frames on a reel. You need to go through all of it.

Separating the Digital Wheat from the Chaff
In hindsight, I’m not surprised I’ve had to sift through a lot of cutting-room floor clips to find the money shots. This is all unedited footage. (If someone should somehow find my iPhone in 100 years and extract my own family video clips from it, I’m sure many of them will seem superfluous as well.)

That said, I am finding some cool clips of my family in action that are worth saving. So, I’m glad I’ve embarked on this project.

I also came upon some interesting environmental shots from the 1960s.

My father was clearly flying somewhere and shot this clip over Manhattan. Nice!

Doing It Yourself is a Reasonable Choice
As for the quality of my father’s converted films using my Kodak REELS Film Digitizer, it’s what you’d expect. It’s good… good enough.
(I know a professional shop would do a better job using equipment worth many thousands of dollars.)

And so far, my Kodak consumer unit has been operating well, though the image framing sometimes slips out of its center a bit after you start a conversion.
(So, you need to start it again.)

Don’t Wait Any Longer
Yes, I’m pleased with the way my film conversion project has been going. It’s a very hands-on process working with film, and I have to admit the tactile experience is strangely satisfying.

And yes, I’m glad I didn’t pay a company to globally convert all my father’s 8mm movies.

No matter how you approach this, it’s a lot of work (and some money). But if you’re the family’s archivist and you uncover old family film footage, there’s really no choice on what to do next.

Digitize it.

November 23, 2025

Do You Know Where the Red Reset Button Is Located?

My home’s furnace quietly stopped working last week. I didn’t notice the specific moment, but it was shortly after dinner. I thought I felt a bit cold, and I stopped what I was doing. My ‘Spidey Sense’ told me something was wrong.

I turned to glance at a little digital thermostat I keep near my home office desk. The temperature was four degrees cooler than it should have been.

My new Google Nest Learning Thermostat runs a tight ship. So, I knew something was off. (If I were starring a science fiction movie on a spaceship, the next scene would show a pinhole leak in the hull as oxygen vented out.)

My Furnace Wouldn’t Fire Up
I listened for the normal background hum of our heating system. Nothing (no comforting purr of my warp engines). I hurried down to our basement to check the circuit breakers. All good there.

I rushed backed up to check out my gleaming Nest Learning Thermostat. It knew that it was too cold but reported that my furnace was actually running, and my house would reach its desired temperature in 45 minutes.

Houston, we have a problem.

My furnace just wasn’t firing up, and it was 38°F out. My family didn’t know the situation yet. But the clock was ticking.

There was only thing I could do. So, I made the call…

The Big Red Button
I called for an emergency repair. Yes, I pay for an annual plan to protect against this specific moment.

Ninety minutes later, the technician showed up.

The first thing he asked me was whether I had pressed the red button.

“The red button?”

“Yes, the big red reset button. Do you know where that is?”

I did not.

The technician opened up the side of my furnace and pointed. I had to look closely. It wasn’t exactly a bright red button, but there it was, red enough to see… if you were looking for it.

Red Alert
I’m not sure how I didn’t know about the red reset button after all these years. There have been plenty of opportunities during the annual maintenance checks of my heating system. But clearly, I wasn’t paying attention. (Or perhaps no one ever told me.)

The technician reached forward and pressed it. The system started to chug to life.
(Really? How embarrassing if this was the simple fix.)

And then my furnace coughed and conked out.

I felt a sigh of relief. At least it wasn’t the red button. (I dodged that reputational bullet.)

The problem clearly ran deeper.

Warp Power Restored
The good news is twenty minutes later, my Scotty had my warp engines running again. Something about nozzle misalignment and carbon build up. (I processed his explanation as my “dilithium crystals” were out of alignment in their chamber. My Star Trek brain would understand that.)

He was on his way, and my family had heat again.

I walked back into my home office, sat down at my desk and thought about my experience…

Hello, HAL
I felt a bit giddy. I was so happy this little emergency wasn’t somehow my fault. My furnace actually required a repair technician’s attention. Yes, I knew I had been oblivious to the red button fix, but I was worried I had missed another obvious sign, like a circuit breaker. (I hadn’t.)

Plus, as my story demonstrates, pressing the reset button doesn’t always work.

Ultimately, I think this all points to a larger issue. Don’t we all want some mastery over the various technologies that impact our daily lives?

Time to Upskill
Of course we do. But it’s becoming easier every day to allow that equation of control to drift further away from us.

And this certainly extends beyond running the electronics and systems in your own home.

It’s about how you interface with technology in just about every part of your life.

On most days, it’s simply a remarkable partnership. And to maximize that potential, we’ve all got to upskill and learn to use the new, revolutionary AI-fueled interfaces.

But sometimes systems break down, and you’d better know where that red reset button is located.

It’s equally important to remember that the red reset button isn’t always the fix.

Remember Your Backup Plan
So where does that leave us exactly?

Well, life is complicated. Always has been.

Things don’t always work the way you expect. User error is no excuse. So don’t abdicate your responsibility to understand the basics.

Have a plan. Then, have a back-up plan. The buck always stops with you.

And yes… it never hurts to know where that red button is located.

November 16, 2025

Here’s How I Finally Wrapped My 9th Grade Film Thanks to AI Video Generation

These are the AI characters I created to star in the big scene from “The Portal in Central Park,” originally written by me and a few friends decades ago and finally brought to life through Google’s Veo 3’s AI superpowers. Here’s how I did it.

When I was in 9th grade, I joined a school project with some friends. We were going to shoot a science fiction mini movie around Central Park in New York City. We wrote part of our time travel script, discussed the many logistics and locations we’d shoot in.

Young Filmmakers on the Streets of New York?
I remember we were going to feature a tall, black obelisk that at the time was found at the entrance to Central Park on 59th Street and 5th Avenue. The sculpture would be the ‘time portal’ that our characters would walk towards and disappear through. Clever editing would avoid the need for special effects.

We were in ‘preproduction’ that spring, and it would have been a spectacular time to film on the streets of New York. Though we were all inspired by the potential of our little project, most eventually realized the many complexities of making a movie and how long it really would take to pull it off. Still, I felt undeterred. But the others had a different (more realistic) view.

Our project started losing steam, and ultimately, our short flick never got out of development. It was simply too big a lift. A few months later, we all graduated, and that was it.

My Origin Story that Never Happened
This would have been my origin story as a fifteen-year-old filmmaker, but it was not to be. (Instead, a year later, I found a more structured opportunity to explore my video production interests in high school.)

But I’ve never forgotten about my first student movie short that never was. That obelisk scene is seared into my long-term memory. I really wanted to capture that shot. I saw it so clearly.

I still do.

AI Video Generation Can Bring Your Vision to Life
Over the decades, I’ve occasionally found myself returning to the nagging sadness that we never finished our movie. Heck, we never started it!

But if I could somehow go back to the future and capture that obelisk scene, maybe I could check it off my bucket list.

Well, now I can… from the comfort of my home office with a little text-to-video prompting and the power of AI video generation.

Yes, the magic of Gen AI is transforming our existence on a daily basis. And yes, it can now enable me to finally manifest my dusty vision out of thin air.

So that’s exactly what I decided to do.

There are multiple platforms that are up to the task. I decided to use Google’s Veo 3.1 and Flow/Scenebuilder. So, I signed up for the Google AI Pro plan for twenty bucks a month. I felt that would give me enough generative AI credits for what would be a 30-second scene.Text to Image Prompting
First, I created still images of my three main characters using Google Whisk and its text-to-image generation powers:

The Leader

Second in Command

The Nerd

Text to Video Prompting in Scenebuilder
Any remnants of our original script were long gone, but as I’ve said, the obelisk imagery remained clearly in my mind.

I’ve admittedly updated the characters (away from a few school kids) and added a few lines (current scriptwriter’s prerogative). Yes, these AI characters can talk!

Then, I uploaded the images of my AI actors and began typing in prompts for individual shots around this one scene. I relied on the ‘Scenebuilder’ mode to retain the same characters and background from shot to shot.

Veo 3.1 is impressive, but it also hallucinated a fair amount, adding in new scripted lines, a few of which I end up using.

“The Portal in Central Park,” My AI-Generated Movie Scene
And here’s my completed 30-second scene, “The Portal in Central Park”… finally ready for its premiere all these decades later.

Imperfect, Yet Simultaneously Stunning
Okay. This is not exactly going to win any awards, and it does look rather fake (Though not entirely fake… It could easily serve as an early draft for a pitch to do a real shoot).

And I also found myself struggling to get precisely what I wanted. (Perhaps that’s due to the limitations in my basic text prompting skills.) Strangely, I felt like a director arguing with live actors who didn’t want to follow my direction.

As I mentioned, I ended up accepting the actors’ improv in a couple of the hallucinations. So, this scene isn’t exactly what I originally envisioned, but it’s close.

The background music is also AI-generated through Google’s MusicFX platform. I just typed in… “A cinematic feeling piece of music suggesting that time is running out. Exciting violins. Medium tempo.”

Click. One try is all it took.

That’s a Wrap!
Ultimately, I found it amazing what I was able to accomplish in just a few hours. That said, I edited the clips together manually in Final Cut Pro. This part still required (for now) nuanced timing and a human touch.

Each clip took about a minute to generate using Veo 3.1 Fast mode. And yes, there were many that ended up on the cutting room floor.

But as imperfect as the results were, I can still say I successfully brought my teenage cinematic vision ‘to life.’

The Future of Visual Storytelling
But I must admit there’s more to this exercise than completing the big scene from an old school project that I’m sure my former classmates have long forgotten about.

The truth is I’m back to where I started as a teenager. I still feel the creative passion to bring stories to life, but I again need to learn how to use the tools available to me.

And that’s exactly what I’m doing.

For twenty bucks, you and I can conjure up complete videos with stories and characters based on simple text prompts. It feels entirely like a fantasy. But it’s not.

The only part of the process that feels normal is this:

-The power of the written word is as strong as ever.

Keep It Real
We’re clearly in the middle of a creative revolution. If you want to keep up, there’s no time to lose.

Learn how to use these new AI-fueled creative tools, which will continue to improve… There are countless reasons why.

…Or else you may find yourself eventually becoming the hallucination on the cutting room floor.

Category: Tech How To

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