Tag: film conversion

April 24, 2012

Generation Imaging Is The Complete Microfilm Scanning Service Provider

A recent search for Microfilm Scanning Services suggests that many people are looking for some sort of microfilm to digital conversion but may be getting confused with the various naming conventions. It is easy to get lost in the lingo. The difference between microfilm to digital conversion and microfilm conversion to digital, as well as other expressions, all relate to the more general term of microfilm scanning services. However, a microfilm scanning service provider like Generation Imaging can provide many other services that all fall under the umbrella. Microfilm scanning services can also include many other microfilm conversion to digital such as 16mm microfilm to digital conversion, 35mm microfilm conversion to digital and many other microfilm types.

An organization or individual searching for a microfilm scanning service does not need to be an expert in this matter, and should do the best in finding one. Finding a true microfilm scanning service provider helps eliminate some frustrations down the line. As an example, I have talked to customers that needed a microfilm to digital conversion. After further clarification, the customer actually needed a company that had various types of digital microfilm scanners. In this case, the customer identified the source as one type of microfilm when in fact, he had various types that required different microfilm to digital conversion methods. Generation Imaging is a true microfilm scanning service provider equipped with the proper digital microfilm scanners to support all of the customers need.

Microfilm scanning services in today’s age go much further than the traditional microfilm to digital conversion. There are many other things to consider before and after the microfilm conversion to a digital formats. In most instances, the end user is only interested in the end result. For example, John from the genealogical society, wants to transfer his microfilm records to digital so that he can provide all the records online to many interested users. He contacts a microfilm scanning service provider for the solution. Although he has a clear goal, the microfilm scanning service company should provide guidance to keep John out of trouble. A successful microfilm scanning service company should find out how John will be searching for the information and offer solutions like OCR (optical character recognition ), or some other type if indexing format. Also, the microfilm scanning service providers needs to be able to perform microfilm to digital conversion on all of the different types of microfilm that John has in storage so that his image library may be complete. To support this, the microfilm scanning service provider needs to be equipped with digital microfilm scanners for 16mm microfilm, 35mm microfilm, and many other microfilm types.

In addition to indexing and OCR, a microfilm scanning service company should be able to perform data processing to achieve the ultimate goal. After the microfilm to digital conversion is complete, and the data has been indexed according to specifications, the final product may required that the images get wrapped into multi-page pdf files, or some other file structure. The microfilm scanning service providers should be able to handle all of the necessary steps to achieve the best possible results that our current technology offers. Check the services at Generation Imaging for your microfilm conversion needs.

October 20, 2011

What Are Microfilm Scanning Services?

At the most basic level, microfilm scanning services refers to digitizing roll film. In other words, it is the transfer from analog media to digital format. To break it down even further, it is roll film to tiff, pdf, jpeg, or other image format. The two types of roll film are 16mm and 35mm, not to be confused with movie film.

So in addition to the actual roll film conversion, is another component of microfilm scanning services?

Quality control. Some companies don’t actually check their work, or simply do a quick spot check before sending the project out. What happens is that he burden would get put on you to perform your own in-depth quality check. If you don’t have time or labor to perform a check, there would be a great chance that the images are incorrect, which is a nightmare. Generation Imaging performs four phases of quality control, which are including in our standard microfilm scanning services.

Phase 1: Generation Imaging’s scanner operators actually check their work during scanning. They check their settings. As a failsafe, each project has a project manager and supervisor to verify that the microfilm machines and specifications are correct.
Phase 2: Another worker or workers will audit the scan. The scanner will create a ribbon of the entire roll, and the auditor will manually verify, modify, and- if necessary- adjust quality or rescan the roll.
Phase 3: This is an intense quality control process that meets industry standards. It is performed by a separate quality control team. A significant percentage of images is checked. 100% QC and/or manually adjusting or manually cropping or manually splitting images are add-on microfilm scanning services.
Phase 4: The CD, DVD, or hard drive is checked and image counts are matched.

As you can see there is more to microfilm scanning services than just hanging a roll on the machine.

October 6, 2011

Scanning Company With Low Microfilm Scanning Cost

How important is it really to scan your microfilm records? And How is this process ever going to pay for the microfilm conversion cost? These and many other question are asked by organizations all the time. Generation Imaging is a scanning company that has been scanning microfilm for years. The experts that make up the core of this scanning company have combined 30 years plus of experience helping organizations bring their microfilm scanning need to a successful completions.

More that just a scanning company, we see ourselves as advisers. When you contact our scanning company, you will meet a team ready to help you understand all you need to know about your microfilm scanning project. The importance of your scanning project is determined by your needs. Your consideration to data conservation, efficient data utilization and customer services are just some issues our scanning company looks at to determine the importance of your microfilm conversion needs. Scanning companies may not always get involved with this, but at Generation Imaging, our scanning company goes this extra step and it has proven very beneficial to our customers.

Typically, the savings associated with a scanning project is subject to real utilization, and the value is shared with other benefits. The experts at our scanning company can look closely at some of this factors and estimated the break even point. In Many cases your project begins to pay back soon after completion because our scanning company is very competitive with price. Our scanning company will offer you some of the lowest microfilm scanning cost ever.

August 30, 2011

Scanning Microfilm Helps Researchers and Writers

A recent news story from Summerside (Prince Edward Island, Canada) revealed how a 74-year old former Air Force navigator searched through old newspapers and microfilm in a small back room at MacNaught History Centre and Archives.

Larry Gray is writing his fifth history book:

“I am very much a believer that history is very important. It’s very important to know where we’ve been and how did we get where we are now.”

Generation Imaging agrees, and that’s why we consider scanning microfilm is an important service to society. Scanning microfilm to create digital images has many benefits for historians, researchers, and writers. Images can be named by newspaper date and retrieved quickly. Better yet, images can be OCR’ed, so the user can type a word and have all the pages come up in the collection that have that word.

Microfilm scanning saves time. Scanning microfilm saves space. Roll film conversion is efficient. 35mm reel conversions allow easier ways to copy.

Although libraries are working on skeleton budgets, perhaps local governments and concerned citizens could raise money to see the benefit of scanning microfilm to create digital images.

Believe it or not scanning microfilm is not as expensive as one would think- it’s only a couple of cents per image. When you consider the relative low cost involved, ask yourself what should the price tag be to preserve history? Think of the positive impact roll film conversions have on society. Why do you think Google has taken upon itself to convert newspaper and magazine roll film to digital images online?

September 8, 2009

Microfilm scanning from Generation Imaging

Hi, and welcome to Generation Imaging’s microfilm scanning blog. We hope to provide educational resources for microfilm scanning, microfilm scanners, roll film conversion processing, archiving microfilm, microfilm RFP bids, and much more.

Converting microfilm to digital image is a niche industry- but, as they say, it’s a living. For the people that manage and operate Generation Imaging- it is a FUN living, have been in the microfilm digitizing industry since the early 1990’s, and know every little detail about microfilm.

So../what is microfilm and why is microfilm important? Microfilm is generally measured 16mm or 35mm across, and are hopefully stored in reel spools or 3M or Kodak cartridges. I say hopefully because sometimes we have seen unspooled roll film, which needs to be reeled. Microfilm is used for archiving, research purposes, and some organizations use microfilm to look up insurance records, school records, medical records, or government records. Microfilm are created by reducing paper documents into image frames with a specialized microfilm camera.

The process of microfilm scanning converts microfilm to digital images, like TIFFs, PDFs, JPEGS, or other file formats- and the images can be black-and-white (bi-tonal) or grayscale. The benefits of converting microfilm to PDF or other format are obvious- no more manually searching old microfilm in a microfilm viewer. You can also make an unlimited number of digital copies, have the images indexed, uploaded to systems or the Internet, modify them, print them out, and you eliminate the need to waste valuable space storing microfilm.

A microfilm scanning company should have the experience and technical know-how to transfer microfilm to TIFF. In the new economy, a microfilm scanning company should also have the best price- to be competitive microfilm scanning companies have been reducing the cost of microfilm to encourage and stimulate the economy.