Technicolor Magi-Cartridges – Scanning to digital

We are occasionally asked if is it possible to transfer the Tecnhnicolor Magi-Cartridge, and the answer is yes the cartridges typically contain 50’ft of film in a permanent loop, although there were other makes with some holding up to 300’ft but these are very rare.

Slot the cartridge in and press play!

Films were convenient and easy for the end user, the projector that was used to play the cartridges required no rewinding or fiddly loading, just plug the cartridge in and off you go, really clever in its day and I’m sure it was a talking point at Christmas with the relatives when you had the annual home movie show.

You may have just come across the little blue cartridges, as many of the projectors simply don’t work anymore. So how can you watch them again?

Transfer to Digital

We can transfer the film to a digital format such as universally compatible MP4 format in HD. this means you can view them on your Smart TV, PC and Apple computer even upload to online.

Firstly we will need to take the film out of the cartridges, fortunately for us Technicolor made the cartridges relatively easy to take apart without any damage to the precious film.

Now the tricky bit we have developed a way of retaining the wound film in its loop so we can locate  the top and tail of the film that has been joined, we then cut the film here, add some leader and tail, we then splice the film onto our transfer spools, this then enables us to properly clean and make the film ready for digitisation without any loss or damage to the film.

It really is Kodachrome 

The film is actually Kodachrome Super 8 as Technicolor did a deal with Kodak to use their film in the cartridge system, so the quality of the images should be very good as this film has great preservation quality, although we always do colour adjustments as necessary to improve the pictures for TV or online viewing.

We don’t reload the cartridges there’s not really any point but you can have the empty cartridges back with your new film reels should you want them back. Films are would onto spools for return and safe storage.

Easy to view

Supplied in the universally compatible MP4 format suitable for any smart TV, computer or online. Files can be supplied on a USB pen drive or cloud delivery.  For a fixed price quote just let us know how many cartridges you have it’s as easy as that.

Contact us for more information.

Happy viewing!