Christmas 1967 was an excellent one for a young 13 year old boy. That year, he received a Bell & Howell Super 8mm home movie kit (camera, projector and screen). That was a very special gift to give for a family of modest financial position. It was also a special gift in that 38 years later the silent home movies shot by that boy hold great memories from our past. All of the movies are from day races or the first few heat races of the evening since the film was not sensitive enough to capture races under the lights. And like our memories, time has caused some of the film to fade a bit.

I begin by having 100 feet of film scanned and converted into media files. Since I have not worked with movie files before this test allows me to learn the new AVID DV software and Adobe After Effects software (a $1,400 software investment for this project). Since the movie files are very large, I will also need to add one or more hard drives to the PC or acquire a new computer to replace our current 7 year old PC. Yes, this web site is an expensive hobby!

The first film converted is a day race from the fall of 1968. I believe it to be the Yankee 300 that was won by Fred DeSarro. Rather then try and stream the image files over the internet I will post them on the web site for you to download to your computer. It will take a couple of hours per file to download since the files, even when compressed, will be big. Speaking of compression, I plan to use as little as possible as the original film resolution isn't great and additional loss of image clarity caused by compression would make it difficult to watch.

Please contact me (CLICK HERE) if you have any questions or comments or Norwood Arena home movies that you would like to share via this project.